Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — NIGERIA

Labour Officer, Fernando Po

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what reply has been given by the Government of Nigeria to the suggestion of Mr. M. E. Ogon that a Nigerian labour officer should be posted at the Nigeria office in Fernando Po and should be assisted by a team of labour inspectors stationed at different parts of the island.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. John Profumo): A Nigerian labour officer has been stationed in Fernando Po since September, 1956. There is also an assistant labour inspector there. The Governor-General has recently visited the island and so has a combined Federal and Eastern Region Parliamentary delegation. The Delegation's report will no doubt touch on the question of labour staff.

Mr. Mallalieu: Are Her Majesty's Government satisfied that conditions are now adequate to allow Nigerian labour to come into the small territory? Is not in the case that even in a small territory like this one it is possible to have tucked away pockets of bad conditions which would be intolerable to anyone in this House?

Mr. Profumo: I think that would be possible, but the hon. and learned Member might like to know that of the 25,000 to 30,000 Nigerians employed there a large number return for a second or even a third contract.

Passports

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will accelerate the process of granting pass

ports to Nigerians by arranging that the Federal Commissioner in London may give the necessary authorisation, instead of reference being made to Lagos.

Mr. Profumo: The primary responsibility for authorising passport facilities to Nigerians rests with the Federal Government, and it is for that Government to decide to what extent authority should be devolved on their Commissioner in London.

Eastern Region Development Corporation

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Eastern Region of Nigeria Development Corporation will be published.

Mr. Profumo: I am asking the Regional Government, which is self-governing in this sphere, for this information and will write to the hon. Member when I receive it.

Slave Dealing

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how far the matter of slave dealing and child stealing into Fernando Po from Nigeria was discussed at the London Nigerian Conference; whether the matter has been reconsidered; what further action has been taken; if he is aware that thirty children aged between four and ten years have been recovered in a campaign against slavery in the Abakaliki district; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): This was not discussed at the Conference itself but my hon. Friend, the Under-Secretary of State, discussed it at length at that time with the Governor-General, who is satisfied that all possible steps are being taken by the Nigerian authorities to combat this evil. The recent cases in the Abakaliki district are sub judice, so that I cannot comment on them.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not that seem to indicate that there is a great deal of slave raiding and child stealing in that area and, under those circumstances, how does that fit in with the assertion that conditions are improving in this respect?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: This is indeed a revolting traffic, but I am confident that


the Government are anxious to stamp it out. Any apparent increase in numbers may really be due to the increasing efficiency of counter-measures.

Oral Answers to Questions — CYPRUS

Deep-water Port

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will make a statement on the progress being made for providing a deep-water port in Cyprus.

Mr. Profumo: The plans and specifications for extension of Famagusta harbour are now well advanced, but substantial details have still to be settled before tenders can be invited.

Mr. Williams: In view of the increased strategic importance to Britain in the Eastern Mediterranean of both the island of Cyprus and the port facilities which are to be developed, is my hon. Friend able to say now whether the facilities will be capable of taking both civil and military traffic?

Mr. Profumo: As has already been explained in the House, the project is of prime importance for the trade and tourist traffic of the island, and that is what it is really for. However, the new facilities, when completed, will be a very considerable advance on what there is at present.

Archbishop Makarios

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will now permit the return of Archbishop Makarios to Cyprus.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, Sir.

Mr. Robinson: As part of the welcome given to the new Governor of Cyprus, Sir Hugh Foot, upon his arrival in Cyprus a few hours ago, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that it would help him to open a new chapter in this unhappy story of relations in the island of Cyprus if a gesture such as this were made, in view of the fact that sooner or later the Archbishop will have to be allowed to return to the island? Why should not it be sooner rather than later?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I think that a new chapter could well be opened if the Archbishop himself would take the lead in

calling for an end of the terrorism for which, in the past, his utterances have been largely responsible.

Mr. Robinson: Is not the Minister aware that for seven months there was no violence whatsoever in the island, and that Her Majesty's Government did nothing whatsoever to start negotiations with representatives of the Cypriot people?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The hon. Member must not count upon the credulity of some people outside and be allowed to get away with any such statement. During these seven months the most active attempts have been made to get together the parties concerned in the international field—the Greek, Turkish and British Governments—to discuss this matter, which everybody who has followed it carefully knows is a highly desirable prerequisite to a settlement. It is in no part the fault of Her Majesty's Government that those talks have not taken place, nor has the task been made easier by the irresponsible statements which were made at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.

Mr. Vane: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a very large number of people in Cyprus would not consider the return of the Archbishop as opening a new chapter but as reopening an old one, and a bad one at that?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Callaghan: If that is the right hon. Gentleman's view, can he tell us in what circumstances he proposes to start negotiating with the people of Cyprus? Is he saying that in no circumstances will the Archbishop be permitted to take part? If not, will he tell us in what circumstances the Archbishop—who is clearly the chosen representative of 75 per cent. of the people of Cyprus—will be able to take part in these discussions?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As the hon. Member should well know, I have made it clear that the prior need for the restoration of tranquillity is the unequivocal denouncement by the Archbishop of the violence in Cyprus. As to the way in which the talks with representative Cypriots, or international talks, may take place, I naturally feel that in this matter I should be influenced by the views which the Governor may put forward.

Mr. Callaghan: Can the Minister make himself quite clear about this? Is he saying that, despite the existence of a period of tranquillity which has lasted since last March, he is still not ready to enter into discussions which would include the Archbishop until the Archbishop has denounced violence which ceased eight months ago? If so, does he think that that is the basis of a realistic policy?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am afraid that the hon. Member is very mistaken. Violence has not ceased. There is every indication that the intervening period of so-called truce has been used by E.O.K.A. to try to consolidate its position.

New Mental Hospital

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when construction of the new mental hospital in Cyprus, plans for which have existed for many years, is likely to start.

Mrs. L. Jeger: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement on the prospects for a new mental hospital in Cyprus.

Mr. Profumo: Detailed plans were drawn up in 1956, but other more urgent building work has hitherto prevented a start being made. The Cyprus Government have not yet made final decisions on the development projects to be undertaken next year.

Mr. Robinson: Is the hon. Member aware that the existing mental hospital in Cyprus is a disgrace to the Commonwealth? Is he aware that the patients are living there in physical conditions which are quite intolerable anywhere in the world in the twentieth century? Further, is he aware that the island has been promised a new mental hospital for very many years? As an earnest of Her Majesty's Government's desire to promote social development in the island, will the hon. Member see that an early start is made?

Mr. Profumo: Certainly. It is intended to make as early a start as possible. I agree that it is disappointing that it has not been possible to get ahead earlier with improvements, but the hon. Member may care to know that the Cyprus Government intend to spend £5,000 early in 1958 to improve conditions in the existing hospital.

Mrs. Jeger: Is not that a retrograde step? Surely it would be much better to use this money in building a new hospital. Secondly, can the hon. Member tell the House anything about the report of a distinguished specialist who visited this hospital at the request of the World Health Organisation and inform us what were his views about the state of affairs that he found?

Mr. Profumo: I agree with the hon. Lady that a start on the new hospital must be made as soon as possible. I was merely letting the hon. Member know what might be done in the interim. Preliminary plans have been prepared for Phase One of the new project, which will cost £100,000, and it is hoped to provide for Phase One in 1958.

Documents

Mrs. L. Jeger: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in view of his statement on 31st October that he would consider placing in the Library documents C604/R/54 and 12014/56 circulated by the Government of Cyprus, when he now proposes to do so.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: After careful consideration, I have concluded that it would not be appropriate to do so.

Mrs. Jeger: Can the Minister, in the first place, tell the House why he is making this extraordinary decision? Secondly, is he aware that the extracts which have already been published from these documents indicate that a civil servant in Cyprus has used his position to disseminate what can only be regarded as party propaganda among Government servants? Is he aware that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South, among others, is referred to in this document as having her head buried in the sand? Is it now the Government's policy that self-determination can never apply in Cyprus?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: My reason—and I think that on reflection most hon. Members would agree with me—is that civil servants in Cyprus and elsewhere should be able to express themselves quite freely and frankly—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—
in minutes and confidential documents without fearing repercussions outside the public service. As for the suggestion that these documents—every word of which I


have read very carefully—reflected only upon the party opposite, I would remind the hon. Lady that they could be held to have reflected upon me, for not having made the best possible reply to some of the arguments put forward from the other side.

Mr. Callaghan: Is not this rather an unusual circumstance? Part of these documents have been published, I understand, and part of them at any rate in some way reflect upon my hon. Friends. If these partial documents are allowed to pass in this way, does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that this colonial civil servant will be regarded as having made it difficult for himself to serve both parties in the State? In fairness to him, ought not the documents to be published, so that we can see whether in fact they were an impartial summary of events?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, Sir. I am here the custodian of a very important tradition, namely, that documents of this kind must be regarded as privileged. The fact that through some improper means part of these documents reached the outside public is no reason why the whole of the documents should be published. I am confident that if the hon. Member were in my position he would take exactly the same line. As to Mr. Reddaway himself, he has never spared himself in working fearlessly and in the best interests of the people of Cyprus over the last few years, despite the vilification by Athens Radio and the Press, and I am glad to have this opportunity of affirming my confidence in him, which confidence was wholly shared by Sir John Harding.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Since the documents have been published in part in Cyprus, they are known to other people and therefore have ceased to be private documents. In those circumstances, should not they be published in full?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, Sir. If I said that they should I should be putting a premium upon parts of documents finding their way into the public Press and then there being a demand for publication of the whole documents. I must stand by my statement that these documents should not be given wider publicity than they have already received.

Mr. Brockway: On a point of order. May I ask your guidance on this point,

Mr. Speaker? A civil servant has issued documents which contained derogatory comments upon Members of this House. Are Members to be denied the opportunity to see documents of that character?

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that that is not a point for me. It is a matter entirely between the House and the Minister.

Mr. Griffiths: If perchance the documents are referred to at all in this House cannot we claim to have the whole of them laid upon the Table? This civil servant of Her Majesty's Government, serving in an overseas territory, has circulated documents which have gone outside official circles. In those circumstances, are not we entitled to ask that the documents should be laid upon the Table of the House?

Mr. Speaker: I had not heard anything about these documents until this moment. I do not know what is in them. I accept what the right hon. Gentleman tells me about the matter. Even so, I have not heard them quoted so as to bring the matter within the ordinary custom of laying a document that has been quoted in the House. I do not think that, in general, the same rule applies to inter-Departmental documents as applies to other documents.

Mr. Griffiths: May I ask, with respect, whether you would consider giving further thought to this matter in the light of information which may be revealed, and giving us your considered judgment in due time? I should be obliged, Sir, if you would consider doing that.

Mr. Speaker: I will certainly consider anything which the right hon. Gentleman asks me to consider. I am merely acting on the rule. It is really a question of procuring the best evidence. If a document has been quoted or cited, the idea is that the original should be made available to hon. Members so that they may see whether the citation or quotation was right or gave the truth of the document. I have not heard a word about the document up to the moment.

Mr. Shinwell: May I ask whether this is a Cabinet document? Has it at any time been submitted to the Cabinet? If so, by the rules of this House Cabinet documents, if mentioned and quoted, ought to be laid on the Table.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) has asked me, on a point of order, a question of fact which I cannot answer. I have no idea what the document is. I have never seen it or heard of it before.

Mr. Dugdale: Did I understand you to say, Mi. Speaker, that, as you are not certain what was actually in the document, you will consider the matter further and will be in a position to make a statement tomorrow or the next day?

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) asked me to consider the matter and, naturally, I shall do so in the response to his request.

Mrs. Jeger: Further to that point of order—

Mr. Speaker: We must get on with Questions. I hope that the hon. Lady will be brief.

Mrs. Jeger: I understood you to say, Mr. Speaker, that you had riot heard a quotation from the document. May I repeat the quotation which I made earlier, that this document stated that hon. Members on the Labour benches were
guilty of burying their heads in the sand of self-determination.
I asked the Minister whether he wished to take this opportunity of informing the House that self-determination at any time was now no part of Her Majesty's Government's policy in Cyprus. I submit to you that that has not been answered.

Mr. Speaker: On the rules of procedure. I quote again from the Manual of Procedure:
If a Minister of the Crown quotes in the House a despatch or other state paper which has not been presented to the House, he ought to lay it on the Table.
That is the rule. From the citation which the hon. Lady quotes, it does not seem to be like a dispatch or State paper, although of course I have no knowledge about that. I have not heard it quoted from.

Mr. Callaghan: The Colonial Secretary says that he wishes to defend this colonial civil servant, extracts from whose dispatches I may say have left a very bad taste in the mouths of hon. Members on this side of the House. Would not it be the best defence of this colonial civil servant if the whole of the

dispatch were put in the Library where it would not get publication, and hon. Members could see what in fact has been said? Otherwise the impression will be left in the minds of hon. Members on this side of the House that the Colonial Secretary—as usual—is playing party politics with this problem.

Mr. Speaker: That has nothing to do with the point of order.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: May I say in reply to that—

Mr. W. R. Williams: On a point of order.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Does the hon. Member for Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) rise on a point of order?

Mr. W. R. Williams: Yes, Sir. In view of the fact that the Colonial Secretary himself introduced the issue and said that he would place a copy of the document in the Library, does not that make a difference to your Ruling?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Further to that point of order. May I say that the hon. Member for Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) is mistaken? The Under-Secretary said, in reply to a Question, that he would consider placing it in the Library. It was considered and the decision was taken not to place it in the Library.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are getting behind with Questions, which is unfair to those hon. Members who have put down Questions to be answered.

Oral Answers to Questions — ZANZIBAR

Town Areas (Land)

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will appoint a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the acquisition of land in the town areas of the Protectorate of Zanzibar.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, Sir. I have no evidence of any need for the appointment of such a Commission.

Mr. Johnson: Has not the Afro-Shirazi Party, which won the last elections led by


Sheik Karume, alleged that there has been forcible acquisition, there being no sale deeds, by foreigners? Was the matter raised with the Minister on 30th October, and, if so, what was his answer?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Yes, it certainly was raised at the meeting. I found no evidence whatever that there had been any forcible acquisitions. Discussions with the party revealed that the reference in the memorandum to "foreigners" meant Arabs and Indians in Zanzibar, the suggestion being that those people, being latecomers to Zanzibar in comparison with the Africans, could properly be called foreigners. I made it clear, to put it mildly, that I did not accept that view.

Mr. Johnson: Is not the accusation about forcible acquisition without sale deeds, and not so much about foreigners?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I took great exception to the word "foreigner" being employed in Zanzibar, and this was taken in good part, but I had no evidence whatever of any forcible acquisition.

Secretary of State's Visit

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement regarding his visit to Zanzibar and particularly with reference to his meeting with the delegation of the Afro-Shirazi Party on Wednesday, 30th October.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I spent one day in Zanzibar and was delighted to meet again His Highness the Sultan; I received eight delegations from various organisations including the Afro-Shirazi Party.
This party submitted a memorandum containing twelve points, but in the time available it was possible to discuss only four of them briefly. Representatives of the party are to discuss the memorandum with the British Resident as soon as the present session of Legislative Council is over. I was also able to see something of the excellent work being carried on at the Kizimbani Agricultural Experimental Station, and at the East African Marine Fisheries Research Organisation which operates under the. East Africa High Commission and has its headquarters in the island.

Mr. Johnson: Is not it a fact that the Minister could give the Afro-Shirazi Party, which won the last elections, only

20 minutes, from, I think, 10.20 a.m. to 10.40 a.m. on 30th October? Was not that shabby in the light of the fact that the memorandum dealt with the common roll, secondary education, the economic development of Pemba and other important matters?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: When all but about one hour of my day was spent indoors seeing delegations, I think "shabby" is hardly an accurate description.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH HONDURAS

Delegation

Mr. Marquand: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has concluded his discussions with a delegation from British Honduras; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a further statement in regard to the breakdown of negotiations with the representatives from British Honduras.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) on 27th November. The actions of Mr. George Price which caused the breakdown of the discussions with the British Honduras delegation were taken on his own responsibility, and not in furtherance of the programme of the People's United Party. Neither the Governor nor I has any quarrel with that party which, although strongly opposed to British Honduras entering the West Indian Federation, looks to developing self-government and in due course to British Honduras controlling its own destiny. While anxious to foster economic contacts with Central American States it has never advocated any form of joint association in government with Guatemala, still less subordination to that country. Her Majesty's Government regard the Guatemala claim to sovereignty over British Honduras as completely without foundation but as Mr. Price was informed some months ago we have told the Guatemalan Government that we are very ready to discuss with them and the British Honduras Government any other questions concerning their relations with British Honduras. The principles underlying the policy of Her Majesty's


Government towards dependent territories have been made clear on many occasions and, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State explained to the delegation at his first meeting with it, those principles are, in fact, reflected in Article 73 of the Charter of the United Nations. Our aim is, in British Honduras as elsewhere, to build up, is rapidly as possible economic and social foundations on which political development can proceed as far and as fast as its circumstances permit.
As regards British Honduras joining the West Indies Federation, it is for the people themselves, through their representatives in their Legislature, to decide this. Her Majesty's Government have given many assurances, which I now repeat, that we have no intention of dictating to them on the matter.

Mr. Marquand: While welcoming that very full Answer to my Question, particularly the right hon. Gentleman's reiteration of the position of this country and that there is no intention of forcing British Honduras into a West Indian federation, and the distinction which the right hon. Gentleman draws between the action of Mr. Price and the policy of his party, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is taking any special steps to acquaint the people of British Honduras with his feeling that the People's United Party has a perfectly legitimate right to express its views to him and that he has no objection whatever to receiving those views, although he makes the distinction between that and the improper action which Mr. Price undoubtedly took in London? Further, is it still the policy of Her Majesty's Government to give British Honduras all the economic aid which they can possibly provide?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am very glad of the opportunity to assure them, through the House and through my Answer to the right hon. Gentleman's Question, that that is so and that I am always glad to receive the points of view of the party. Neither I nor the Governor has any quarrel with that. It is the Government's intention to do all we can, within the obvious limits imposed by current economic difficulties, to give economic aid to British Honduras.

Mr. Marquand: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what proposals for closer association between Guatemala

and British Honduras were put forward by the delegation from British Honduras which recently visited London.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The delegation put forward no such proposals. When the unofficial members of the delegation saw the Guatemalan Minister in London the proposals he explained are understood to have been, chiefly:
That British Honduras should sever its connection with the British Commonwealth.
The Government should be carried on "in association with Guatemala".
After a period of years there should be a plebiscite to determine whether the people of British Honduras wished to continue with this arrangement.
Meanwhile Guatemala would assist British Honduras by some form of financial subvention.
There is some dispute as to whether part of the plan was that British Honduras should be administered, in some manner, under the auspices of the United Nations.
These proposals, which were completely unacceptable to at least two of the four delegates—but which Mr. Price was still considering ten days later—bear, as Mr. Price well knew, no relation to the matters which Her Majesty's Government have offered to discuss with the Guatemalan Government.

Mr. Marquand: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept my personal assurance—and I believe that hon. Members on this side of the House share my view—that we have no sympathy whatever with the improper approaches in England to the Guatemalan Government? Will he reiterate that he himself feels that there can be no objection to the People's United Party putting forward proposals to him in a proper manner?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Certainly, Sir, the proper manner being through the Governor. I am glad to hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, because no hon. Member on either side of the House personally knows more about British Honduras than he does.

Oral Answers to Questions — EAST AFRICAN TERRITORIES

Common Market

Mr. Marquand: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what decisions were taken during his recent conference with the Governors of East African


territories concerning the development of a common market in that area and the readjustments which such a development would render necessary.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: None, Sir. The East African territories already enjoy a common tariff. No duties are levied on inter-territorial trade.

Oral Answers to Questions — KENYA

Proposed Council of State

Mrs. Castle: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will make a statement on the powers, functions and composition of the proposed Council of State in Kenya.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I cannot add at present to the replies which I gave on 14th November.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his proposal for a Council of State has caused widespread alarm among the African community in Kenya and among liberal European opinion and that there is grave fear that such a Council of State, with powers of reference, revision and delay, could act as a stumbling block to the development of multi-racialism? Will he make a statement very quickly to allay those fears?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Far from acting as a stumbling block, I hope that the Council will assist the development of multiracialism. I ask the hon. Lady to wait until we formulate the proposals which I shall then be very glad to discuss.

Employment, Kiambu District

Mrs. White: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many men are estimated to be unemployed in the Kiambu district in Kenya; and what proportion they are of the estimated adult male population.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: About 5,000 which is 8 per cent. of the estimated adult male population of the district.

Mrs. White: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we have had most disturbing reports of malnutrition and other social difficulties in the Kiambu district? Will he place in the Library a fuller statement than he has now given about the position there, because we are

very worried by some reports from the Kiambu district?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I had a number of discussions with the Governor about the situation in Kiambu when I was in Kenya recently, and I will be very ready to do what the hon. Lady asks.

Legislative Council Elections (Loyalty Certificates)

Mrs. White: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies to what extent it is proposed to dispense with loyalty tests in the forthcoming elections for additional African members of the Legislative Council in Kenya.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The question of loyalty certificates in relation to the forthcoming elections is at present being examined by the Kenya Government.

Mrs. White: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there was very much dissatisfaction in Kenya, not only among Africans but among religious bodies and other organisations, about the operation of the loyalty tests in the previous election? Is he aware that it would give general satisfaction if the loyalty tests were now dropped, as they are liable to abuse and misrepresentation?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I cannot anticipate the decision and recommendations of the Government of Kenya, but in this regard we must also remember the very strong representations about the need for some such security made by loyalist Africans to Mr. Coutts during his wide tour of Kenya. As I said, the matter is now under examination.

Achieng Oneko (Detention)

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why Achieng Oneko, who was acquitted by the Kenya Supreme Court in 1953 of all charges brought against him and has since been detained at the Takwa Special Detention Camp without a fresh trial, has been refused permission to receive a visit from his wife, whom he has not seen for several years.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The authorities have so far found it impracticable to allow all the detainees at Takwa to be visited by their wives, and are not prepared to grant special facilities to Oneko.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this reply will be widely regarded as a very depressing commentary indeed on the administration of these detention camps? When is it proposed that this administration shall be improved to enable a man who was acquitted by the highest court in Kenya of all charges brought against him to receive a visit from his wife?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As the hon. Gentleman knows. Takwa is a very remote place and in Takwa are many of the real leaders of the Mau Mau movement. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that visits are now allowed in all but four of the camps and that these four are either particularly remote or contain the hard core of Mau Mau. The Governor has this matter under constant review.

Mr. Stonehouse: Why is a man who was acquitted of all charges kept in a very remote place?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: That is altogether another question. There was an Adjournment debate on this matter. I must remind the House that this case was considered by the Appeal Court, which recommended that the man should not be released.

Constitutional Changes

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what agreement has now been reached by the racial groups in the Legislative Council of Kenya regarding the constitutional changes he has announced.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I understand that a large section of European opinion, and Asian opinion generally, have expressed satisfaction at the proposals in Cmnd. 309. I am sorry that the African Elected Members have not felt able to give them their support. As the hon. Member will know, since the termination of the arrangements made by my predecessor, constitutional change no longer depends on the agreement of all groups in the Legislature, though I should of course much prefer it if this agreement existed.

Mr. Brockway: In view of the fact that the African representatives represented the view of 6 million people against 200,000 of the other races, will not the right hon. Gentleman make a new effort,

by a conference of the groups, to reach not an imposition but a settlement to which they can all agree?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The solution arrived at, as announced by me when I was in Kenya, is in the best interests of all sections of the community, and I hope that the hon. Member's influence will be brought to bear to that end.

Oral Answers to Questions — GIBRALTAR

Table of Precedence

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1) if he is aware of the resentment felt by Gibraltarians that, despite the representations made by the city council, the Table of Precedence still requires that city councillors rank lower than the heads of Her Majesty's Government Departments; and, in view of the importance of this to the people of Gibraltar, and the relative unimportance to Government employees, if he will explain the reason for the undue delay in dealing with the matter;
(2) on what date representations were first made to His Excellency the Governor of Gibraltar and to himself by the city council that councillors should have precedence before the heads of Government Departments in the Table of Precedence and on suitable occasions in the life of the community.

Mr. Profumo: Representations were first made to the Governor by the city council on 20th May, 1950, and further representations have been made from time to time since then. Each was carefully considered, without undue delay The mayor and city council were accorded positions in the Table of Precedence which was approved by Her Majesty in August, 1954. During the Governor's visit to London this summer, the matter was discussed with him, and my right hon. Friend has concurred in his proposal that the mayor should accorded courtesy precedence in his discretion.

Mr. Dodds: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I am asking about city councillors? I ask the hon. Member and his right hon. Friend, who on so many occasions in the past have shown deep interest in the welfare of the people of


Gibraltar, not to under-estimate the deep feeling of these extremely loyal and intelligent people. Does not this savour very much of the days of the conqueror and the conquered? Will not the Government use some common sense in 1957 and please these people by doing something which will not cost us any money, but which will show that we respect them much more than seems to be the case from these circumstances?

Mr. Profumo: I am not sure that I can go as far as the hon. Member. I went to Gibraltar earlier this year and I am bound to tell the hon. Member that, although we had very close and frank consultations on every subject which appeared of interest, this matter was not raised. I also saw the Mayor of Gibraltar in London the other day. The Governor does not consider that there has been any change in the functions of the council, since the existing Table was agreed in 1954, sufficient to justify alterations in it.

Mr. Dodds: Is the hon. Member saying that, because it has not been mentioned in correspondence with his Department recently and because it was not mentioned when he was in Gibraltar, this matter has not been raised very many times? If he is not aware of the deep feeling, the Answer he has given will bring a reaction which will show that this is deeply resented.

Mr. Profumo: I was saying only that I thought that through inadvertence the hon. Member was overstating the position and I was acquainting him with the fact that this matter was not raised when I was in Gibraltar. I have said that the problem has been carefully considered and there is no question of the people in Gibraltar feeling that my right hon. Friend and all of us concerned do not give very close consideration to problems which affect them.

Oral Answers to Questions — MAURITIUS

Electoral Boundaries Commission (Report)

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware of the anxieties of the Muslim minorities in Mauritius; and whether he will now say when the report of the Trustram Eve Boundary Commission will be published.

Mr. Profumo: My right hon. Friend is aware of the views which have been expressed by the representatives of the Muslim community in Mauritius. I am afraid that I cannot yet say when the report of the Electoral Boundaries Commission will be published.

Mr. Johnson: Does the Under-Secretary confirm the Muslim view that their only hope of a fair deal lies in having single-member geographical constituencies—40 as the Commissioner said? Is he aware that the Labour Party of Mauritius has backed that, but that the Parti Mauritien is opposing it, and can he tell the House whether there is an unofficial delegation here from the Parti Mauritien who are lobbying against that recommendation?

Mr. Profumo: No, Sir. It would be wholly wrong for the hon. Member or anyone else to draw that conclusion. The report is not yet even submitted to my right hon. Friend. I ask hon. Members to await the report of Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve on an extremely difficult matter which my right hon. Friend will consider the moment he gets it.

Oral Answers to Questions — SEYCHELLES

Fiscal System (Report)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when he expects to receive a report from the special commissioner appointed to examine the fiscal system in the Seychelles.

Mr. Profumo: Probably some time in February.

Mr. Swingler: May I ask the Under-Secretary of State whether this report will be published? Is he aware that it is eagerly awaited by those hon. Members who take an interest in the affairs of the Seychelles? While we welcome the improvements which have been made, we are aware from recent official documents that there are many grave deficiencies still in existence. Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the report will be immediately published?

Mr. Profumo: It will be published as soon as possible after it has been completed.

Chief Justice

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is now in a position to announce the appointment of a new Chief Justice for the Seychelles.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, Sir. Careful consideration is being given to the selection of a suitable candidate and an announcement will be made as soon as possible.

Mr. Swingler: Can the right hon. Gentleman speed up this matter? Is not it months since the last Chief Justice departed? While we welcome an opportunity of appointing a Chief Justice who may have the confidence of the people, are not cases piling up in the courts?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It is true that some cases are being held up, but I understand that only one has been described as a case of urgency, and a judge has been appointed by the Acting Governor to deal with it. There are other cases which, so far as I know, have not been described as urgent, where it is not possible for the acting Chief Justice to sit, either because he was formerly a member of the Executive Council, or because he acted as a lawyer in the case. I am very conscious of the need to hurry up this appointment.

Oral Answers to Questions — WEST INDIES

Colonial Development Corporation Loans

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the nature of representations he has received from the West Indies Standing Federation Committee regarding the rate of interest charged on loans by the Colonial Development Corporation and what reply has been given.

Mr. Profumo: The Standing Federation Committee has asked that the rates of interest charged on Exchequer advances to the Colonial Development Corporation should be reduced so as to enable the Corporation to provide finance for development projects at rates of interest not greater than those prevailing before the recent increase in the Bank Rate. The Committee's request has only recently been forwarded to my right hon. Friend and he has not as yet given a reply.

Mr. Stonehouse: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply. May I ask him and his right hon. Friend to bear in mind that many worth-while long-term projects in the Caribbean and elsewhere will be held up if the Colonial Development Corporation is not enabled to make loans at a reasonable rate of interest?

Mr. Profumo: I can assure the hon. Member that there is little direct evidence that colonial development as a whole has been seriously prejudiced by high rates of interest.

Mr. Marquand: Can the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the work of colonial development will not be confined in future by an excessively high Bank Rate in this country? Is it possible to carry on colonial development on the basis of charging extremely high rates of interest which may be justified in the London money market but have no justification whatever in relation to colonial development?

Mr. Profumo: I think it would he better if my right hon. Friend were permitted to examine this application and make a reply before I say any more.

Bahamas (Racial Discrimination)

Mr. Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps are being taken by the Government of the Bahamas to end racial discrimination in hotels, clubs, and places of entertainment.

Mr. Profumo: There is no discrimination in hotels and public places of entertainment in the Bahamas. What is done in private clubs is a matter for the members.

Mr. Allaun: Could not the proprietors of these private clubs be encouraged to behave in a more civilised way, as, for example, in the highly successful tourist industry in Jamaica, and, in particular, could not this be undertaken by the Rock Sound, the Half Sound and Cotton Bay Clubs now, pending extensions?

Mr. Profumo: I think that is really a matter for the gradual education of public opinion, perhaps by members of the clubs themselves.

Antigua (Guided-Missile Range)

Mr. Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the cost of constructing the guided-missile range in


Antigua; and to what extent the people of Antigua were consulted.

Mr. Royle: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the stage of completion of the guided-missile range and test centre at the deactivated United States Army base in Antigua; and what arrangements have been made with the United States authorities for its operation.

Mr. Profumo: With the agreement of the Government of Antigua, who were consulted by Her Majesty's Government throughout the negotiations, the United States Government were granted permission to establish tracking facilities for guided missiles in Antigua on the understanding that they would enter into a formal agreement similar to those already signed in respect of tracking stations along other sections of the Long Range Proving Ground. I understand that construction is well advanced and that the United States, who are meeting the entire cost of the station, expect to spend some $400,000 during the construction period.

Mr. Allaun: Does effective control of the range lie solely in the hands of the American Army? Were the people of Antigua informed in advance?

Mr. Profumo: The Government were informed in advance and the Government represent the people. Arrangements in regard to the use of this range are satisfactory to the Government of Antigua and Her Majesty's Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — SINGAPORE

Citizenship Ordinance

Mr. Stan Awbery: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what agreement has been reached on the Singapore Citizens' Bill; what are now the chief qualifications for inclusion in the new electorate; and to what extent the present register will be increased.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The Singapore Citizenship Ordinance became law on 21st October, 1957. I am sending the hon. Member a copy and will have copies placed in the Library. The chief qualifications for the franchise are that a person should be a Singapore citizen and over 21. If all those eligible apply for citizenship the register of voters will be increased from about 350,000 to about 600,000.

Mr. Awbery: Can the Minister inform us whether Chinese who are born in Singapore and the Malays and Indians are put on the same basis?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Yes, Sir. It is very complicated. I advise the hon. Gentleman to read the Ordinance carefully. The Singapore Government cannot refuse citizenship to anyone born in Singapore or whose father was born there. These people become Singapore citizens by the operation of law.

Oral Answers to Questions — HONG KONG

Naval Dockyard (Redundant Employees)

Mr. Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what proposals have been made by the Government of Honk Kong to provide alternative employment for the 40 electricians declared redundant in the Royal Naval dockyard.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The Hong Kong Government has offered to help put these electricians in touch with possible employers. Several weeks ago the dockyard management made a similar offer, but only five of the men availed themselves of it. Another ten found new jobs before they were due for discharge.

Mr. Rankin: Is the Colonial Secretary aware that since this Question was tabled a most serious position has grown up? In view of the fact that the 40 has become 4,700 and that unemployment is already widespread in Hong Kong, can the right hon. Gentleman say what planned attempt is being made by the Government of Hong Kong, in association with Her Majesty's Government, to deal with this very serious position? Can the right hon. Gentleman also say whether or not consultations are being held, or have been held, with the trade unions concerned, and whether these organisations have been asked to cooperate in the matter?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am fully conscious of the very grave effect that this closure is bound to have on Hong Kong and we are anxious to do all we can to alleviate it. It will, of course, be spread over two years and every effort will be made by the Hong Kong Government and by Her Majesty's Government to help in this matter. Although we cannot accept


any obligation to find alternative employment, we are arranging for the appointment of an employment advisory committee. Consideration is being given to the matter by the Employment Liaison Office and an officer has been seconded for full-time duty in the dockyard to give what help is possible. I am personally interested in this matter, which is the result of a decision for which I share full responsibility and which, as Colonial Secretary, I deeply regret.

Mr. J. Griffiths: If, as I gather from the right hon. Gentleman, the Governments will not accept any responsibility for providing alternative employment, is not the situation in Hong Kong very serious? I understand that the Government themselves will not give aid and help?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It certainly does not follow very much the reverse. It is very much more frank to say that we cannot accept responsibility, but that does not mean that we shall not do everything we possibly can to supplement the efforts of individuals to obtain alternative employment.

Oral Answers to Questions — UGANDA

Special Branch (African Informers)

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many African informers are employed by the Special Branch in Uganda; at what rate they are paid for their services; and what use is made of the reports they provide.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It would not be in the public interest to reveal such information.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Colonial Secretary aware that the activities of some of these African informers are purely to stir up trouble between political organisations in Uganda and the Administration, and that in view of the great improvement in the political situation in Uganda it would be beneficial if the activities of these informers were curbed?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I could not accept the hon. Gentleman's description of the work of the African members of the Special Branch. If the hon. Gentleman has any particular complaint, I hope that he will let roe know.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: Is not this a rather wretched Question, which can do nothing but harm to Uganda and is completely unjustified?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Yes, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — COLONIAL TERRITORIES

Contracts of Employment (Penal Sanctions)

Mr. Creech Jones: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps he is taking to have abolished penal sanctions for breach of contracts of employment in those dependent territories where such sanctions still exist.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The few remaining sanctions are being kept under review.

Mr. Creech Jones: Will the right hon. Gentleman expedite the ending of penal sanctions throughout the whole of our dependencies? Are not these workers completely defenceless economically, and does not the responsibility lie directly with the Secretary of State? if we could ratify the Convention it would do a power of good.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I would certainly be glad to see such restrictions go, but it is essential if that is done that civil sanctions should be effective. It could not be said that civil sanctions alone would be effective in Northern Rhodesia and the South African High Commission Territories, where the penal sanctions still remain. I have this matter under observation all the time.

Forced Labour

Mr. Creech Jones: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Convention 105 concerning the abolition of forced labour adopted in the 1957 International Labour Conference has been brought to the attention of the Governments of all dependent Territories; and whether they have been urged to base their law and practice on the principles and terms of the Convention.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I propose to address overseas Governments on the subject of Convention No. 105 as soon as ratification by Her Majesty's Government has been completed. I should prefer not to anticipate the outcome of these consultations.

Mr. J. Hynd: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT or in some other form a list of the Territories in which forced labour is still operating?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I will consider that suggestion, but I would ask the hon. Gentleman to wait until I have had discussions with the Governors concerned, when I hope I may be able to make a rather more profitable statement than before.

African Foremen and Supervisors (Training)

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies to what extent the Governments of Colonial Territories in Africa are taking steps to provide training facilities for potential African foremen and supervisors in industry, as recommended by the Inter-African Labour Conference recently held in Lusaka.

Mr. Profumo: I have not yet received the Governments' comments on this recommendation, but I have no doubt that they will give it sympathetic consideration.

Mr. MacPherson: May we take it that the last phrase in the reply of the hon. Gentleman represents the attitude of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Profumo: The hon. Member had better take it in any way he feels. I cannot change my Answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — MALTA

Integration

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a further statement on the present position of the negotiations with the Prime Minister of Malta regarding the integration of the Colony with the United Kingdom.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I have nothing to add at this moment to my reply to my hon. Friend, the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Teeling) on 14th November.

Mr. Brockway: Could not the right hon. Gentleman clarify the position? Is he aware that the Prime Minister of

Malta has made statements which suggest that the progress of integration will depend largely upon the decision about the use of the dockyard and that the Government have now said that there will be provision of work at the dockyard for three years? Can the right hon. Gentleman inform the House whether that is the case?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: These are separate issues. Very good progress is being made with the proposals for closer union and integration with Malta on the political plane. I have made the statement, and I repeat it, that there is no question of the dockyard being closed overnight. That statement was repeated by Mr. Mintoff a day or two ago.

Mr. Callaghan: As we have not had that information in the House, would the right hon. Gentleman confirm the statement that there is to be at least three years' work in the dockyard at the present level?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The statement which Mr. Mintoff attributed to me he was entitled to do. The statement was made by me.

Mr. Callaghan: Did he interpret it correctly?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: There were a number of other phrases in it. It is better that the statement should be read as a whole.

Mr. Callaghan: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish the statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT so that the House can see it?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Certainly.

Oral Answers to Questions — NYASALAND

Police and Agriculture (Expenditure)

Mr. Pargiter: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the amounts to be spent from recurrent revenue by the Government of Nyasaland for the year 1957–58 on police and agriculture, respectively.

Mr. Profumo: The amount for police is £447,757. The amount for agriculture in its narrowest sense, excluding animal husbandry, forestry, and conservation and improvement of water supplies, is £414,245.

Mr. Pargiter: Does not the Under-Secretary consider these expenditure figures totally out of balance, having regard to the extreme poverty in Nyasaland and the urgent need for agricultural improvement? if we can afford to spend this amount of money on the police, why cannot we afford to spend more on agriculture?

Mr. Profumo: It is not unreasonable, having regard to the size of the population and the size of the territory.

Oral Answers to Questions — SIERRA LEONE

School Children

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many children between the ages of five and 12 years, in Sierra Leone, are now attending school.

Mr. Profumo: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to him on 19th July, to which I cannot add.

Mr. MacPherson: The hon. Gentleman will realise that that reply referred to last Session. Can he give some assurance that the proportion of children attending school is now more than it was then, namely, one child in nine of the children under five years of age?

Mr. Profumo: The figures which were given to the hon. Member were, of course, for 1956 and we have not yet reached the end of 1957.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN RHODESIA AND NYASALAND

Doctors

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many African doctors are in the public service in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, respectively; and to what extent their salaries differ from those of similarly qualified European doctors.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: None, Sir. The second part of the Question does not therefore arise.

Mr. MacPherson: Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been called to the statement of the Minister for Public Services in the Federation to the effect that doctors and other public servants in

some circumstances would be raised to equal status with Europeans in the higher branches of the service? Does not a statement of that sort rather make nonsense of the statement made by the Minister?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am not responsible for the Federal Government nor for statements made by Ministers there.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE EMPLOYEES

Mr. Mellish: asked the Prime Minister if he is aware of the resentment felt by the trade union movement at the action taken by the Minister of Health with regard to the three per cent. award unanimously agreed by the Administrative and Clerical Workers (Hospital Staffs) Whitley Council; and what action he proposes to take to ensure that the good will of the trade unions is maintained in future negotiations on the various Whitley councils.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): As was said last Tuesday, good will can best be secured by a real understanding by all concerned of the purposes of the measures which the Government have had to take.

Mr. Mellish: That is no answer. Surely the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the Whitley Council machinery, which has been in existence for 50 years, is now in very great danger, and that means the whole position of the country is in great danger? This is not a matter to be pushed back to the Minister of Health, who started it anyway, but for the Prime Minister, who should use his initiative to repair some of the damage that has been done.

The Prime Minister: On the general question, I think my Answer is correct and the more the whole problem with which the Government are trying to deal is understood, the better it will be. In regard to this particular Question, there is to be a meeting tomorrow between the Minister of Health and some of the representatives of this Council.

Mr. J. Griffiths: May I repeat to the Prime Minister the question I put to the Minister of Health about the meeting tomorrow and ask whether the Prime


Minister and the Government will be open to reconsider their previous decision after that meeting?

The Prime Minister: I think I could do no better than to answer in the same terms as my right hon. and learned Friend, which are that those who come to see him will put forward their point of view and whatever points they wish to make. My right hon. and learned Friend will, no doubt, consider them in conjunction with his colleagues after he has received the deputation.

Mr. J. Griffiths: The deputation asked first to see the Prime Minister and he referred them to the Minister of Health. If they are not satisfied after the meeting on Wednesday with the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Health, will the Prime Minister be willing to see them after that?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps I had better read what I wrote to them, and which was published. I said that I would prefer them to see the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Health and that it would be right if in the first instance the staff side would address its requests to them. I said:
I am, therefore, bringing your letter to their notice. I shall be prepared to reconsider your request that I should receive a deputation if, after any meetings you may have had with the Ministers concerned, there remain further considerations which you would wish to put to me.
They accepted that and I think it was a proper decision.

Mr. H. Morrison: Does not the Prime Minister realise that this action of the Minister of Health has raised a first-class issue of industrial relationships of the greatest importance, and that the recommendation about salaries and wages was quite modest in relation to recent developments? In the circumstances, in view of the very big issue involved, could not the Prime Minister respond to the request of my hon. Friend and receive a deputation himself, recognising that this is a really first-class issue for the Government in industrial policy?

The Prime Minister: No. I think the Whitley Council representatives concerned were quite satisfied with the decision which I took. On this matter of the deputation, this is a Council which deals particularly with the employees who come

under the Secretary of State and the Minister of Health. I think it, therefore right in the first instance, at any rate, that it should have its meeting with them If, after that, it is thought wise and helpful, as I made perfectly clear in my letter. I should be very willing to receive it.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (DUTIES)

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Prime Minister what are the duties of the Minister of State, Scottish Office.

The Prime Minister: The Minister of State in general acts as the Secretary of State's deputy, operating mainly in Scotland, and as such has oversight of all the Secretary of State's Departments. The Minister of State is also generally responsible for Scottish business in another place.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Can the Prime Minister say if one of the duties of the Minister of State is to explain Government policy in Scotland? Is he aware that recently the Minister of State said that housing subsidies were not only wrong but immoral? Does not he think the word "immoral" gives great offence to a number of people in Scotland, including farmers and landlords who benefit from the subsidy and also the Minister himself?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Member, not for the first time, has pursued his well-known practice of putting down a Question to which I try to give the correct Answer, in order to cover a supplementary question of which he has not given notice. If the hon. Member will send me any quotation of the speech of the noble Lord to which he objects, I shall try to deal with it.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED STATES AIRCRAFT, UNITED KINGDOM (HYDROGEN BOMBS)

Mr. Mason: asked the Prime Minister what specific undertaking he has received from the United States Government that Her Majesty's Government would be consulted if the United States Government thought it urgently necessary to signal bombers carrying hydrogen bombs, already in the air, operating from British bases to bomb enemy territory.

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Prime Minister what agreement he reached with the President of the United States of America as to the procedure by which British-based United States planes carrying hydrogen bombs on patrol will obtain a joint decision from the two Governments before dropping their bombs in an emergency; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Prime Minister what specific undertakings the United States Government have given to Her Majesty's Government that they will not signal bombers carrying hydrogen bombs already in the air, operating from British bases, to bomb enemy territory, without first consulting Her Majesty's Government; and whether these undertakings apply to so-called tactical atomic weapons as well as to hydrogen bombs of strategic calibre.

Mr. Warbey: asked the Prime Minister what joint decisions have already been made by the British and the United States Governments regarding the circumstances in which United States bombers, operating from bases in this country, may take instant retaliatory action and what those circumstances are.

The Prime Minister: I would refer to the Answers I gave on this subject on Thursday, 28th November, to which I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to add.
I would only repeat that all these cases are covered by the Attlee-Churchill understandings.

Mr. Mason: Does the Prime Minister realise that the House and indeed the country is perturbed as to the extent we are already committed by an act of the American Government without any more consultation? Will he assure the House that, no matter what the circumstances, British-based American bombers will not be given a signal to bomb enemy territory without the prior approval of Her Majesty's Government having been sought?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. The hon. Member has correctly stated the situation. These machines, whether standing upon the runway or actually in the air, are covered by the understanding which was first entered into by

Mr. Attlee when he was Prime Minister and afterwards confirmed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). They are covered completely by that understanding.

Mr. Zilliacus: Does not the Prime Minister agree that these arrangements are subject to errors of judgment or other human frailties by the pilots and that peace hangs on a hair-trigger with these arrangements? Would he explain why it is necessary to have bombers on patrol with nuclear bombs on board and others ready to take off at fifteen minutes' notice, in view of the fact that the Leader of the House explained to me in reply to my Question on 31st October that the Government's civil defence plans are based on the expectation of getting sufficiently advanced notice of the outbreak of hostilities to evacuate 12 million people?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. It is clearly necessary for all the forces concerned, whether American or British, for patrol and training purposes to operate with their weapons on board. [HON MEMBERS: "Why?"] Because it is the only way to learn to handle them and to use them and to make them effective They have to be loaded. There is a very elaborate arrangement for loading them in and taking them out again. If they are to be use at all they must be carried for training purposes, and I think it is right that they should be carried for patrol purposes, but, as I have explained, there were very careful arrangements by which these weapons were technically called "not armed." The process of arming them is quite an operation and cannot be carried out except upon the direct instructions which, as I have said, under the Attlee-Churchill understandings would be given only by the two Governments in agreement.

Mr. Warbey: Is the Prime Minister aware that he has not answered the specific point raised in my Question, No. 60? Is he aware that his replies so far today and on previous days have related to the question of joint decision at a time when military action was taking place or was imminent? Will he give an assurance that no joint decision ha already been taken under these agreements which will affect the possibility of instant retaliatory action being taken in


the event of a possible false report of ballistic missiles heading for this country or for American bases?

The Prime Minister: Of course the joint decision will be taken by the Governments of the day when the time comes, if ever; and I hope it will never come.

Mr. G. Brown: May I make two points which are causing much worry in the House and outside? First of all, the Prime Minister continues to rest on arrangements made by the right hon. Gentleman who was then Mr. Attlee and is now Lord Attlee—arrangements made at a time when the H-bomb as we now understand it did not exist. Can the Prime Minister say whether he has brought that agreement up to de to in the light of the new scientific discoveries which have taken place since that day and since the speeded-up tempo? The additional possibilities inherent in the present-day H-bomb may, for all that we know, make an agreement entered into in those days less relevant now than it was then. Secondly, whatever the danger may be of a crash setting off an explosion—and I am sorry if I am going too fast—can the Prime Minister assure us that the crash cannot cause a fall-out of radioactive material caused by the breaking of the container in which the bomb is kept?

The Prime Minister: Replying to the first question, it seems to me that if under those conditions it was right to have the agreement as to the use of American bombers placed on British bases in days when, admittedly, the weapons were not so powerful, although very formidable, it is all the more important that that agreement should be maintained in its full strength today; and so it is. I could, of course, answer the second part of the question, but it is perhaps a little wrong for me to do so. There are four Questions on this subject. Although I could give the answer, I think it would be fairer to those hon. Members who have put down this specific question if I were to leave it until Thursday. I am entirely in the hands of the House, but it is rather unusual to answer Questions in this way. If the House wishes, I will answer it.
As I explained last week—perhaps the right hon. Gentleman was not in the House—there is no danger of an

explosion. In the event of a crash in this or in any other country of a machine carrying atomic or hydrogen bombs, or indeed of a machine in transit carrying nuclear material in any form, whether by air or on the land, it is, of course, possible that there may be an oxidisation of any plutonium concerned. Plutonium oxidises fairly easily. The danger would be of a very limited kind and would be dealt with at once under the established precautionary procedures. The hazards of uranium 235 are far less than from plutonium because it neither burns nor oxidises easily. I do not therefore think that the risks referred to—there is none from an explosion—are sufficient to justify any action which would seriously reduce the state of readiness or the training of bomber aircraft, whether British or American.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Butler.

Mrs. Castle: On a point of order. In view of the fact that, with your permission and the permission of the House, the Prime Minister has answered my Question No. 56, may I please have the usual privilege of asking a supplementary question?

Mr. Speaker: I think the proper procedure, if the hon. Lady is not satisfied with what she has heard, is for her to put down another Question. The Prime Minister did not say that he was replying to the hon. Lady's Question.

Mrs. Castle: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We are far behind time.

Mr. A. Henderson: Will the Prime Minister make it clear whether he did or did not answer the four Questions concerned, or did he just quote from one of the Answers?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I had prepared an Answer and I was asked to give at any rate that part of it which appeared to cover the question asked by the right hon. Member for Belper (Mr. G. Brown). I hope that in the circumstances, Mr. Speaker, you would be ready to waive whatever rule of privilege is involved. If I did wrong, I did it only to try to satisfy the House. If the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) put the Question down again


perhaps you would feel, in the circumstances, that it was not incorrect that it should appear again and be answered in due course either in the same or perhaps in longer terms.

Mr. Speaker: I think that is the best course. I would point out to the hon. Lady that if in fact the Prime Minister purported to answer her Question specifically, he was out of order, because he had not previously asked my permission to do so, and Question Time was over.

WEST INDIES (GIFT OF MACE)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. J. GRIFFITHS: To ask the Lord Privy Seal in what manner Her Majesty's Government propose to mark the inauguration of the West Indies and the opening of the new Federal Legislature in April next.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): Mr. Speaker, with your permission and that of the House, I should like to answer Question No. 106.
Her Majesty's Government have authorised me to propose to you, Mr. Speaker, that you should, on behalf of this House, offer to the West Indies the gift of a Mace for use in the House of Representatives. The gift would be a token of our good will and welcome to the new Legislature, and it would carry with it our warm congratulations to the peoples of the West Indies and our best wishes for their future happiness and prosperity.

Mr. J. Griffiths: May I associate my right hon. and hon. Friends with that suggestion and commend it to you, Sir? The gift will carry with it our very best wishes to all the West Indian people and our hopes for the success of this very

interesting and great venture in the West Indies?

Mr. Speaker: I shall, of course, be happy to do as the House desires in this matter. The matter will have to be made regular later on, of course, by the usual Resolution.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Mr. R. Edwards: Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, 21st November, in the course of the debate on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, I stated that the Minister of Health, before becoming Minister, had advised the National and Local Government Officers Association, and had received a fee for so doing. In fact, although the right hon. and learned Gentleman did, some years ago, help this Association with advice from time to time, he did not receive any fee for so doing. I did not consult the National Association before making my remarks, which were impromptu.
I am sorry that I gave a wrong impression to the House, and I should like to express my regret to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I was not able to make this statement earlier, due to my unavoidable absence from the House last week.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Derek Walker-Smith): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting the record straight in this matter and I unreservedly accept his expression of regret.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on Government Business exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Business of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]

Orders of the Day — THE EARL OF BALFOUR (MONUMENT)

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that Her Majesty will give directions that a Monument be erected within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster at the public charge to the memory of the late Right Honourable The Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., with an inscription expressive of the high sense entertained by this House of the eminent services rendered by him to the Country and to the Commonwealth and Empire in Parliament, and in great Offices of State, and to assure Her Majesty that this House will make good the expenses attending the same.—[The Prime Minister.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — ARMY ACT (CONTINUATION)

3.45 p.m.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. John Hare): I beg to move,
That the Draft Army Act, 1955 (Continuation) Order, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.
This is the first time, Mr. Speaker, that such a Motion has been moved. I feel, therefore, that the House will expect a short summary of past events which have led me to put this Motion before the House today.
Nothing is more deeply rooted in the parliamentary tradition of this country than the will of the House of Commons to control the standing Army. The way in which the House has exercised this control over the centuries has fallen under two main heads. First, it has held the purse strings, and, secondly, it has required that its authority has to be sought annually for the continuance of the military code of discipline, without which a standing Army cannot exist.
Until 1879, this control of discipline was achieved by the passage of successive Mutiny Acts. In 1879, there was passed the Army Discipline and Regulation Act, which was succeeded two years later, in 1881, by the Army Act. Since then it has been the practice of Parliament to control the discipline of the Army by the passage of an Army (Annual) Act which has been known in more recent years as the Army and Air Force (Annual) Act.
In 1952, long and stormy debates accompanied the passage of the Army (Annual) Bill, and this controversy resulted, I think, in a general realisation on both sides of the House that the Army Act of 1881 was outmoded, and needed to be thoroughly revised. I have no doubt that they were right. The Acts contained no fewer than 920 Amendments to the original 1881 Act. But even with all these Amendments, nineteenth-century thinking prevailed right up to the day that the Act ceased to function in Parliament.
If we look at Section 104, it will be seen that the liability to provide billets excluded private houses, and also the houses, to use the language of the Section
…of any distillers kept for distilling brandy and strong waters.


On the other hand, ale houses were all right so long as they were not off-licence, in which case they were excluded.
In the Second Schedule to the Act there is another example of this language and thought. Those who provided billets were responsible for providing 10 oz. of meat per soldier for the mid-day meal. If one remembers meat rationing, such a provision is rather laughable; and even with our improved rations of today the soldier nets only 8 oz. of meat. In other words, the Act talked in terms of a soldier's diet consisting of bread and "marge," meat and potatoes, and very, little else.
To put matters right, a Select Committee of the House, under the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens), examined in detail the provisions of the old Army Act, and presented to the House the draft of a new Act which altered the existing law in many respects. I think that the debt which this House, the country and everyone concerned with the Army owes to this Select Committee was handsomely recognised on all sides two years ago. It produced in the Army Act, 1955, a piece of legislation which, subject to minor technical and drafting Amendments only, Parliament was able to accept, and which formed a vast improvement on the old Army Act.
The new Act came into force on 1st January this year. This Act, therefore—to use the words of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)—was born from party controversy and was made possible by the hard work, the good sense and the good will of those who served on this Select Committee. I am glad to see some of them in the House today.
Few people realise the vast amount of work which the members of that Committee put into their job. The size of the task can be shown by the fact that the documents I am holding now represent a summary of the evidence and of the proceedings in which they engaged. They certainly undertook a Herculean task, and we owe them a very deep debt of gratitude.
One recommendation of the Committee, which is expressed in Section 226 of the new Act, is the reason behind this present Motion. The Committee first considered whether there should be a permanent

Discipline Act for the Army similar to the Naval Discipline Act. They decided against this but, at the same time, felt that the new Act, unlike the old, should not be subject to amendment every year. That would merely have meant that in the course of time the new Act would have had incorporated in it the conglomeration of unco-ordinated amendments to which the old Act has been subject.
On the other hand, the Committee considered that the traditional control of Parliament over the Army's discipline should not be relaxed, and that the opportunities for hon. Members to ventilate questions affecting Army discipline should not be more restricted than they had been in the past. It therefore recommended what I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee. West (Mr. Strachey) described as an ingenious solution. In passing, may I say that I know that the House will join with me in expressing our very genuine regret that the right hon. Gentleman is not with us today. We wish him a speedy recovery, and we hope to see him with us soon, because we look forward to his experienced contributions in matters affecting the welfare of the Army, and also, of course, on all aspects of defence.
To return to Section 226 of the new Act, this provides that the Act shall expire twelve months after coming into operation, but that it may be continued in force for a year at a time by Order in Council, subject to the approval of the draft Order by Parliament. Unless Parliament otherwise determines, the Act may not be continued beyond the expiration of five years from the date when it came into operation. The consequence is that, as the Act now stands, it will be necessary to pass a new Act by 1st January, 1962.
Coupled with this procedure was the proposal made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dudley that there should be a Select Committee every five years. For a variety of reasons, it was agreed that this suggestion could not be embodied in legislation or in a Standing Order of the House, but the Government gave an undertaking on 17th March, 1955, that it was their intention to have a Select Committee at the five-year period to review the Act. So far as I know, this is a unique procedure, and I should like to pay tribute to the ingenuity of the hon.


Member for Dudley for thus making what I believe to be parliamentary history.
We have your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, made a few days ago, that, for the purposes of this debate, Members will be competent to discuss anything which is in the Act and that a Third Reading speech on the Act would be in order.
The new Act has now been in force for almost a year. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that the change from the old Act has taken place with remarkable smoothness. There are, I think, three reasons for this. First, the drafting of the new Act and the transitional provisions Act had been done with such skill and care by the Select Committee that the military officers and authorities whose duty it is to administer the new Act have found very little difficulty in switching from the old to the new code.
Secondly, adequate time was allowed between the passing of the new Act in May, 1955, and its coming into operation on 1st January, 1957. Time was given for the revision and publication of all the relevant regulations, as well as a new edition of Part I of the Manual of Military Law and a new Unit Guide, I believe that those responsible in the War Office deserve great credit for the efficiency and imagination they have used in all this very detailed preparatory work.
I am sure that to have tried to rush things faster would have been a great mistake. The Act itself required the making of no less than 100 different rules and authorisations ranging from a new set of procedures down to the instruments of delegation of powers from the Army Council to subordinate authorities.
In the third place, time was necessary, also, because the officers of the Army legal service had to make a success of a widespread series of lectures on the new Act to officers in the Army in 1956.
We have for almost a year now been administering a new Act far more fitted to present day conditions than its predecessor. I should like briefly to draw the attention of the House to some of the important changes in the new Act.
There are changes in the law relating to mutiny and the death penalty. There are now two categories of mutiny, and it is in the more serious category, involving

only violence or refusal of service in operations against the enemy, that the death penalty is introduced. In other cases, the maximum punishment is imprisonment for life. Rather surprisingly, drunkenness has received a definition for the first time. In future, the prosecution will have to prove that an accused was drunk within the meaning of the definition laid down in the Act. There have been a good many changes also with regard to the punishment which can be awarded for particular offences. With minor exceptions, punishments for which officers and other ranks are liable for, offences under the Act have now been brought into line.
There have been far reaching procedural changes. Rules of procedure governing the conduct of courts-martial have been completely rewritten in line with modern requirements and, incidentally, in a much more logical fashion than hitherto. Instead of the old courts of inquiry, there will be boards of inquiry to deal with more important matters and regimental inquiries for the less important cases.
There have been several changes in the rules relating to forfeiture and reduction of pay. Two points in the soldier's favour are that, in future, there can be no forfeiture of pay unless it is authorised by Act of Parliament, and the anomaly whereby a soldier under arrest awaiting trial was liable to forfeiture of pay has been removed. Finally, I will mention that War Department civilians, with the full support of the Whitley Council, may now be tried by court-martial overseas instead of by the civil courts. I shall return to this later.
There have been, of course, no amendments to the Act so far, but I will remind the House that some of the provisions of the Act covering the enlistment of recruits have been altered. The new Army (Conditions of Enlistment) Act, 1957, which governs the enlistment of men on twenty-two year engagements from 1st October this year necessitated the making of further regulations by the Army Council. These were made on 27th August this year and were promulgated to the Army in September last. They are of first-class importance in that they lay down, as the House will remember, the minimum period of colour service which soldiers


enlisting for twenty-two years must perform. It is now six years, with only a few exceptions, whereas it was formerly three years.
The Army Council can, by amending the Regulations, vary the terms of Colour and Reserve service during the first twelve years. Thereafter, the soldier has, under the Act, the right to break at any three-year period without reserve service. These regulations, of course, were made under the Army Act, 1955, which we are discussing, and the Army (Conditions of Enlistment) Act, 1957.

Mr. E. Shinwell: The right hon. Gentleman has dealt with recruitment or enlistment for varying periods. In view of all these Regulations which have now been embodied in the Act, can he explain why it was necessary to appoint a special Committee, under the chairmanship of Sir James Grigg, to consider precisely the matters which have been dealt with in the Act?

Mr. Hare: No, Sir; I think that these conditions are not contained within the Act. I was just saying that we have laid Regulations, which we were empowered to do under the Act and under the Army (Conditions of Enlistment) Act, 1957. I would have thought that, with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that was hardly a relevant interruption at this stage.

Mr. Shinwell: I am quite sure that it was a relevant interruption, otherwise I would not have made it. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I am quite serious about this, and that my point is embodied in the Act. Apparently the War Office came to the conclusion that certain rules and regulations should be contained in the Act which relate to recruitment, the length of service and a variety of other matters affecting recruitment and conditions of service. If the War Office is competent to deal with those matters and regards itself as competent, why was it necessary to set up a special Committee?

Mr. Hare: I think that the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that all that is laid down under the Act are the new terms of service in the form of whether it should be a three-year engagement or six-year engagement. The Committee which he is referring to has been set up to go into far wider subjects,

and those include how to get men to make use of the various terms contained within the Act. The right hon. Gentleman knew the answer before he asked the question.
May I continue by saying something about courts-martial. There has been always a suspicion in the public mind, perhaps going back to the days of Oliver Cromwell, about the workings of military law. During the five years since the Courts-Martial Appeal Court began to operate we have had an independent outside authority of unimpeachable qualifications, consisting of the Lord Chief Justice and judges of the High Court, which sits from time to time as the Court of Appeal.
I think that the House would like to know that there have been, so far, 170 applications to the Court arising from Army cases. In only three cases, involving four persons out of the 170, have the findings of the court-martial been upset. Such a record must surely bear comparison with that of any courts anywhere. In fact, the Lord Chief Justice has authorised me to say that all the judges who have sat with him in the Courts-Martial Appeal Court have been impressed at the way in which judge advocates sum up, and that he is quite satisfied that there is no ground for supposing that courts-martial act otherwise than fairly and satisfactorily.
One further outstanding departure from tradition in the new Army Act which I mentioned briefly earlier is the subjection of civilians accompanying the Army overseas to military court for certain offences. The Select Committee was satisfied that it was preferable to make the relatives of soldiers and other civilians with the forces subject to certain parts of the Army Act rather than, as in the past, to have to rely solely on local civil jurisdiction or, which is even worse, have a complete jurisdictional void. So far this year three civilians have been tried by courts-martial and there have been six summary trials. In all cases except one, where the finding was manslaughter, fines have been imposed. To sum up, while we have not had—

Mr. F. J. Bellenger: On a point of order. Would the right hon. Gentleman, before he makes his peroration, allow me to put this point to him? He has given what I consider to be an


historical survey of the Act itself. Mr. Speaker's Ruling, as I understand it, permits us to refer to matters within the Act under what one might term a Third Reading debate. If, in catching your eye, Mr. Speaker, we refer, shall we say, to recruiting and discuss, for example, the figures of recruiting—I do not know whether we shall be permitted to do that, but it seems to me that the only purpose of continuing this debate is to raise matters within the Act—it seems to me that the right hon. Gentleman has lost his right to reply to what may be a very important subject raised by hon. Members except, of course, with the permission of the House.
May I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman—as he will not be able to make another speech like this next year if he is still in office—whether, when the Order is introduced next year to continue the Act, it will be purely a formality, or whether the right hon. Gentleman will refer briefly to certain outstanding matters such as he would refer to in his Estimates speech and which, I submit, would be in order and of importance in a debate like this?

Mr. Speaker: I think I might intervene to say that the right hon. Gentleman has moved a substantive Motion which, in this House, gives him the right of reply. Therefore, there will be no difficulty if the right hon. Gentleman desires to speak again.
As regards the general Ruling, while it is true that we can discuss matters referred to in the Act, I think that it would not be proper to go into figures too much on matters like recruitment. I think that the general subject is referred to and can be discussed. It is a question of degree as to how far we can go. One must listen to what is being said before one knows what is intended.

Mr. Bellenger: Thank you for your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will now reply.

Mr. Shinwell: Further to my right hon. Friend's point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Minister, as, no doubt, you have observed, has referred to the authority of the Army Council. Without the authority of the Army Council and all the rules and regulations, the Act itself is merely a skeleton.

There is no substance in it at all. It requires the authority of the Army Council in relation to periods of service, recruitment, and so on. These matters vary in the Department from time to time. The Army Council has the right to appoint committees. The right hon. Gentleman is a member of the Army Council. In those circumstances, have we not the right to debate the appointment of committees by the Army Council, their composition and the like?

Mr. Speaker: I do not know that there is anything in the Army Act about appointing committees.

Mr. Shinwell: General powers.

Mr. Speaker: I do not know that that would be in order. I should have to consider that.
As regards regulations. Section 22 of the Act says:
The Army Council may make such regulations as appear to them necessary or expedient for the purposes of, or in connection with, the enlistment of recruits for the regular forces and generally for carrying this Part of this Act into effect.
I think that covers the regulation-making power of the Army Council. As to its committees, I am bound to say that do not know.

Mr. Shinwell: Are not the general powers of the Army Council embodied in the Act? Surely they must he. Surely the authority of the Army Council is required in the appointment of a committee. The right hon. Gentleman has said that the Army Council can delegate its authority. To whom? Obviously to subordinates, the Under-Secretary, to an official or a committee appointed by the Army Council and operating under its authority. In those circumstances, surely we are entitled to debate the appointment of a committee.

Mr. George Wigg: Are we not getting into some difficulty, Mr. Speaker, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) has not drawn a strong enough distinction between the powers contained in the Act and the powers which the Secretary of State exercises, or the exercise of the prerogative? What we are concerned with today is the powers contained in the Act.
There is one further point in your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, which troubles me.


I trust that you will forgive me for raising it, but it is the first time that you are giving a decision and it may be binding for a long time to come. In discussing the regulations which the Army Council make under Section 22, is it not obvious that one must discuss how those figures work out, not only this year but in future years?
If the Army Council decides, in the exercise of its wisdom, on one form of engagement and produces one result, the House may wish to comment on that, because it may indicate that the policy should be changed in another direction. Therefore, without abusing the opportunity in any way, it seems to me that it would be in order, both on this and on future occasions, to discuss the application of the Order in terms of the specific results which the Government achieve.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn: Before you give a Ruling, Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to what happened on the Second Reading of the Army Bill on 25th January, 1955. when exactly this point arose? My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) began his speech by dealing with recruiting and the then Secretary of State for War, the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head), said:
I should be delighted to engage in a debate on recruiting, but, as we are dealing with the Army Bill…I cannot see that there will be an opportunity to reply…
My hon. Friend then said:
…the Bill deals with conditions of service and with terms of enlistment, and I should have thought I was in order in dealing with what is in the Bill.
At that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker said:
I should have thought that it would be an encouragement to join the Army if the Bill were satisfactory."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th January, 1955; Vol. 536, c. 55–6.]
I very much hope, for the same reason as my hon. Friend has said, that in giving your Ruling on this debate, which will cover all future years, you will, at least in the first instance, incline to generosity in the restrictions you lay upon us.

Mr. Hare: I cannot anticipate your Ruling in these matters, Mr. Speaker, but I imagine that, so far, I have been in order. I also imagine that it will be difficult for you to decide which hon.

Members will and which will not be in order.
In answer to the point of order raised by the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), I would say that this is the first time that this procedure has happened. I thought it only courteous to the House that I should move the draft Order; I thought it proper to do so. I am certainly prepared to take lessons from what happens in this debate. I assure the House that it will be treated with all courtesy and that either my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary or myself will reply to the debate. I hope that with that assurance, I can satisfy the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Speaker: It is important that we should try to get the position straight. This is the first time that this procedure has been resorted to for the Army Act and I am anxious not to lay down any rule which is wrong. The way I look at it is that, broadly speaking, the subjects which are covered by the Act are those which, in general, are discharged by the departments in the War Office of the Adjutant-General and the Quartermaster-General—what the soldiers used to call "A" and "Q" matters. Therefore, in my judgment, matters applying to the General Staff, operational matters, the strategy of the Army and even foreign affairs in connection with the Army, are completely out of order on this debate. There are, of course, borderline questions and I should hesitate in advance to lay down a rule about them.
In so far as the Act makes provision for recruitment and for the terms of engagement of the Regular Army, and in so far as it can be shown that these conditions militate against recruiting or harm recruiting or are successful in attracting recruits, I think that that would be in order.
I wish the House, however, to distinguish between the debate on this Motion and the debate which it will have later in the Session on the Army Estimates, which is not affected by our new procedure. There are matters which the experience and judgment of an hon. Member will tell him are more suitably discussed upon Supply than upon a Motion to continue an Act, which is all that we are dealing with today. While it might be essential to permit references to


many matters of a Supply character for the purpose of illustrating an otherwise relevant argument on the Act, I think that it would be better to defer matters of figures, exact computations of figures and the like, to the Supply debate, when we really can get down to it without fear of being out of order.
I hope I have said enough to indicate to the House what is in my mind. Let us not make this a Supply debate; it is not that. It is not a debate on the general administration of the Army as such, but only in so far as it is definitely covered by the Bill or can be reasonably and fairly linked up with the provisions of the Act.

Mr. Bellenger: The House will be most obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for the explanation that you have just given. You will, however, recollect that in previous years, before the Army Act, 1955, was passed, the House could put down specific Amendments to the Act and, therefore, we were able to link up our arguments and, if necessary, give figures on the Amendments that we move to the Army Act. We are prohibited from doing that now, according to your Ruling which you gave to me the other day, as Amendments to the Army Act can only be done by way of a Bill, I think you said.
I hope that as the debate proceeds, if an hon. Member wishes to deal with a matter such as recruiting, which may be urgent in relation to the Government's promise to cease conscription altogether in a short time, you will allow sufficient latitude for the hon. Member to argue his point that by virtue of something contained in the Army Act, the Government will be precluded from observing their faithful promise, which they have given to this House, to cease conscription in a years or two's time.

Mr. Benn: Since we are, at this stage of the debate, Mr. Speaker, drawing the limits of what is in order, may I raise one other point on the general question covered by the Order? I refer to the old question whether we should have a standing Army or not. For the reasons which have been given, in so far as the present continuation Order is the new form of the old Army Annual Act, would it not be in order for those Members who wish to deal with the old question

whether we should have a standing Army to raise it on the Order? Does that not raise a rather larger question than the detailed administration of the Army?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that the terms of the Motion are identical with passing or refusing to pass the old Army Act. The terms of the Motion confine our discussion to the Act which it is proposed to continue. The 1955 Act substituted the present procedure, which we are trying to work, for the old Army Act procedure.
The Act is described as
An Act to make provision with respect to the army.
A general argument that we should make no provision with regard to the Army might conceivably be in order, but it would not be possible to import into such an argument questions of conscription, and so on. It would merely be the question that we should have no Army at all.

Mr. Wigg: It is important to settle the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). Has he not overlooked that the old Army Annual Act, which we passed up to 1952, authorised the maintenance of a standing Army and gave a specific number which the Government must not exceed? We have now altered our procedure. By the Government obtaining Vote A, the numbers are then established and Parliament is then authorised to continue a standing Army. By the exercise of the Prerogative, which first has to be approved by the House, the Army is continued in being. That is what we are engaged upon today when we are asked to approve a draft Order, which subsequently has to be presented to Her Majesty. What we are doing today is continuing in a different form the procedure which has gone on since 1689.

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Member is right. That was what I was trying to say when I said that certain matters were more suitable for discussion on Supply than for discussion on the Order continuing the Act. Vote A is the point in Supply when we decide the number of men in the Army. An argument such as the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) put to me—namely, against the whole of the Act continuing at all—would be a very arid and academic one. I do not think that


it would carry him any further. The better course would be to await a Supply Day, and then to say that we wish or do not wish to grant the supplies necessary for the forces.

Mr. Wilfred Fienburgh: What we are really discussing is the Draft Army Act, 1955 (Continuation) Order, 1957. Presumably, it could happen that the House would wish to vote against this Motion, thereby bringing the Act to an end. Presumably, therefore, it would be in order—I put this purely for the sake of clarification—for a Member to argue, for example, that in his view, because pay in the Army is inadequate, the Army ought to be brought to an end. I take it that within your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, as an hon. Member has the right to argue that the Motion should not be passed, he may adduce the reasons why he thinks the Motion ought not to be passed.

Mr. Ede: I always understood that the value of the Army Act was that it was the means by which discipline was imposed on the Army. The Act deals with discipline. It has nothing to do with Vote A. Apart from the Army Act, we cannot impose military discipline on any unit. A private would be perfectly entitled to tell the sergeant-major exactly what he thought of him, and in his own language, and apart from an appearance at a magistrates' court for using obscene language, or language likely to cause a breach of the peace, there would be no remedy against him.
I hope that nothing that is being arranged under the new procedure will prevent discussions on the way in which discipline as such may be administered in the Army, or prevent the scales of punishment, and so on, from being discussed upon the Measure.

Mr. Speaker: I think that that is so. What the Act is for is, undoubtedly, to impose a code of discipline and so render the Army possible, because it is common knowledge that without discipline an army cannot exist. That is what I was trying to indicate when I referred to the argument of the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Br. Benn) as being somewhat arid. Merely to argue that there should be an Army, but no discipline, would leave us very much in the air. The Army would not then be an army, but would

be an undisciplined gathering of men—not, therefore, an army in the strict sense. I think that if anyone wishes to argue against the establishment of the Army it should be done on Supply.
Meanwhile, as this is a Motion to continue the Act in force, hon. Members should argue that it should or should not be continued for reasons which are relevant to the Statute which is the subject of the Order.

Mr. Hare: In asking the House to give approval to this Order I think I have shown that we are asking for approval of an Act which is infinitely preferable to any similar Act that has been approved by this House for many years past. Though we have not had a year's complete statistics, on the evidence so far available I do not think that there is anything at all to indicate that the operation of the new Act has caused any difficulties. Nor, indeed, has it occasioned any increase in the number of courts-martial or in the number of cases going to the Courts-Martial Appeal Court.
The Army is now regulated by a disciplinary code which is up to date in standards and outlook, and which is blessed by informed opinion on both sides of this House. There is conclusive evidence that this code is being administered with a high degree of justice and impartiality which, I hope the House agrees with me, reflects great credit on those responsible for the administration of justice in the Army. It is, therefore, with full confidence that I commend the Order to the House for its approval.

4.25 p.m.

Mr. Wilfred Fienburgh: First, I would sincerely associate this side of the House with the expressions of good will which the right hon. Gentleman has uttered towards my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey), whose absence from these benches today we very much regret. I would also associate myself with the Secretary of State in agreeing with him that the people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who did such sterling work in the Select Committee which considered this procedure, and the Army Act are to be congratulated on the work they did. I agree, further, with the Secretary of State that it has


come into operation smoothly, due in the main to the various stages by which this Act has been applied and to the informed spirit in which it has been accepted by the Army.
However, it is not enough simply to embody a new code of military discipline, which is supposed to be related to the conditions of the day, and then leave its implementation to people who, in many respects, seem to be at variance with the general spirit of the Act. I agree with the Secretary of State when he says that there have been remarkably few incidents arising, for example, out of the new courts-martial procedure, this new code of military law, this new manual. That I accept, but it is still true that one bad instance of the abuse of military discipline and authority which receives a large amount of publicity in the Press outdoes, in the public mind, all the good which has been done by the reconstitution of the Act, by the reorganisation of the procedures of military discipline.
I have no doubt, for example, that the garrison commander at Chester could justify his recent actions four-square within the corners of the Act as it stands. The House will remember that only a very short time ago the garrison commander at Chester issued an order that the soldiers in Chester, being lax in their duty of saluting the commander's car, should be pulled in by the military police, and for this purpose the military police were to follow the commander's car in a patrol wagon, and every soldier who failed to salute the commander was to be arrested.
This order was reversed immediately, and the area commander himself decided that this was a bad thing. He overruled his own garrison commander in Chester. In consequence, the order was rescinded. However, in the short time during which it was in force, even though it was never actually operated, it did a great deal of harm to the general public's conception of the Army and, incidentally, to the atmosphere in which the right hon. Gentleman hopes to recruit his new Army.
My argument is simply this, that the code is admirable, that the work of the members of the Select Committee was first-class, and that now the Act has gone smoothly through its transition, but that

all this can be overclouded in the public mind in a very short time by the exercise of some small piece of military stupidity on the part of a commander somewhere or other in the country. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to bear this in mind.
The Army Act and the regulations lay it down that illegal punishments shall not be applied by commanders, yet only the other day a commander ordered that for every day's "jankers," or confinement to barracks, to which he sentenced a soldier, that soldier would also lose one day's leave. This order was reversed. It was pointed out that that officer was acting in an illegal way.
The point is that the Press, following its proper duty of reporting on the follies of mankind, reported this issue, and again there was a deterioration in the general public's regard for the Army. If we are to have an Army, no matter how immaculate the Act may be and how immaculate its execution in general, these are examples and issues which will have a severe effect upon recruitment, and it is in the right hon. Gentleman's interest to see that they do not happen.
We are here perpetuating the Army Act, but to have an Army requires more than the perpetuation of the Act. We in the House can legislate to our heart's content, but all we can do is to establish a body of law to which soldiers, once enlisted, will be subjected. All we can do is to clarify the terms and conditions upon which they will be engaged should they choose to join the Army. But the first prerequisite is that people should join the Army, and that, unfortunately, is simply not happening in large enough numbers today.
I am fortified by Mr. Speaker's Ruling, in which he said it would be proper in the course of the debate to discuss in general terms the problem of recruitment. We have had not only regulations under this Act but the Army (Conditions of Enlistment) Act, which we discussed recently, the aim of which was to provide the basis of a Regular volunteer Army for the country. It would be out of order for us to discuss the size and possibly the purposes for which we require this Army, but it seems to be in order for us to discuss the degree to which the regulations under this Act and the terms under the Act are bringing the volunteers forward into the Regular


Army. On that, we have a very dismal story to tell.
I should have thought that it would have been in order for the Secretary of State for War to discuss this matter in his speech, instead of giving us a no doubt interesting historical summary of military law. I wonder why he chose to disregard this matter which, on the Ruling of Mr. Speaker, was in perfect order, and why he gave us a history lesson instead of dealing with the facts as they are today under the Act and the prospects as they may be tomorrow. Is it perhaps because he is worried and afraid that the results will not be such as he led us to suppose when he introduced the new legislation only a very short time ago?
Thanks to the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, we have the answer to a question about the intake of Regular recruits into the Army in October, 1957, compared with the monthly average from January to September this year, and compared with the figure for October, 1956. It really is a most dismal and dreary picture. It is a frightening picture. It is a serious picture—so serious that I think the right hon. Gentleman, since it was in order, might have spent some time either in justifying these figures or explaining their or telling the House what he proposes to do about them.
In October, 1956, he had an intake of 3,663 Regulars into the forces. The monthly average up to September was 2,628. There is a drop of about 1,000 per month in the intake compared with the figure for October last year, but the position is even worse if we take the figure for October this year. That figure shows an intake of 2,123 Regulars into the Army, which is a drop of almost 1,500 on the figure for the corresponding month of last year, and a severe drop over even the monthly average for the first part of this year.
The Minister might have paid some attention to this point in his speech. If these debates are to have any purpose and validity when we come to them annually in future, then, in view of Mr. Speaker's Ruling that recruitment is a proper subject for discussion in them, we must expect a reply from whoever winds up the debate today on behalf of the Government.
We cannot discuss an Act which we intend to perpetuate for another year without paying attention to the general conditions and the general military context in which the Act is sought to be perpetuated. We have it on record that it is the Government's plan to put an end to compulsory National Service. Obviously, it would be out of order in this debate to discuss the general question of whether we should have a conscripted Army, a partially conscripted Army, or an Army based on part-volunteer and part-selective draftees.
In view of the Rulings given, it is most likely that that would be out of order, but I am surely allowed to approach this matter from another angle. Here is an Act which lays down the terms and conditions of enlistment. In view of the Government's pledge to end National Service, is the Section of the Act with which we are now concerned adequate to provide them with the sufficiency of Regular soldiers which they require to substantiate that pledge? Judging from the figures before us, the answer must be, "As of this moment, no."
We on this side of the House, of course, have agreed that National Service must be brought to an end. We have argued that, by following a four-year programme, it will be possible to obtain a sufficiency of Regular volunteer soldiers under this Act and that at the end of that time we can see the end of National Service. But it is simply not enough to make a pious declaration in the House, which is all that the Government have done.
If the Government are firm in their intention, and they really mean what they say, and really intend to get rid of National Service on the time-table which they themselves have announced, it is time now that, under this Act or under the regulations, they brought forward some constructive proposals for giving us the Regular Army which is required as the first basis from which we can get rid of National Service. All we have had so far is alibis. We have been told that, because of the disturbed state of the Army as a result of the reorganisation of regiments, volunteers have felt too diffident about their future to be willing to come forward in large numbers. If that were a valid reason, then, surely, now, when reorganisation is at least


known if not completed, that disadvantage would have been removed.
The soldiers who volunteer now know to a very close degree in what corps they will be able to serve and in what part of a regiment they will be serving. The disability on the part of the volunteer in trying to make up his mind, during the involved and prolonged process of discussion of the future of the Army has now gone. Therefore, the Minister's alibi has also gone.
But the figures are worse than they ever were before. One is led to the rather unpleasant conclusion that either the Government have no intention of fulfilling their pledge, or that they are confident that they will not be in power when the time comes for the fulfilment of this pledge and that the consequences of what they are failing to do now will be thrown on an incoming Labour Government.
There is an appalling record of delay and confusion in taking the steps which are necessary to create a proper full-time volunteer Army. Only a month ago we had a general debate on defence. I am not proposing now to embark on a general defence debate, but to try to relate some of these factors to the enlistment and recruiting sections of this Act. On 7th November, the Minister of Defence himself listed some of the factors which he thought might lead to improvement in Regular recruitment. He said:
Service pay is obviously a factor which influences a man's inclination to join the forces…
What was happening about Service pay? The Minister said that it was under review.
The right hon. Gentleman then listed a large number of small anomalies which were causing some perturbation among soldiers and their families in Aden and the Middle East, and now, one month afterwards—yesterday to be precise—he announced some small changes in the allowances and regulations aimed at correcting some of these anomalies.
The right hon. Gentleman said that another factor which influenced a young man to join the Army was the quality and calibre of his uniform. What did he say about that? He said:
Another matter to which we are giving attention is the improvement of uniforms…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1957; Vol. 577, c. 341.]

The Minister spoke of the inadequacy of service accommodation and voiced a pious intention to proceed with a steady programme of improvement. He spoke of the general conditions of Service life in all its aspects and announced that he was proposing to set up a committee to consider these matters.
What, in fact, has he done? He has said that something is under review. That is Service pay. He has said that some small anomalies will be mopped up. He has said that uniforms are being considered. He has said that in Service accommodation some improvement was intended and that he would proceed steadily. As for the main subject, that is, the general conditions of Service life, he has set up a committee. We have here practically the entire grammar of delay and dither; almost every cliché possible has been used, except the one about turning over every stone to see whether one can find anything underneath it. The Government will not find a soldier under the stone.
We are entitled to say, having made the decision to end National Service, that it is now surely time that right hon. Gentlemen opposite should be able to come to the House with clear, precise and, indeed, dramatic proposals to create the conditions under which it will be possible to recruit a Regular Army in adequate numbers under the Act which we are now discussing.
We have nothing against the appointment of this Committee. The answer is that this Committee should have been appointed a long time ago. Another point is, of course, that hon. Members opposite could get most of the answers which will finally be brought forward by the Committee, if they were just to move around themselves among commanding officers, warrant officers and senior N.C.O.s. This Committee will not find anything new. It will not make any new outstanding sociological discoveries. It will find out that certain things govern a man's inclination to join the Army. We know what they are. In part it is pay, but not entirely pay. If a man can expect a reasonable prospect of a career in civilian life, at present rates of pay, he is entitled to expect from the Army not much more than this but the equivalent in pay, plus what I would call the "being messed about element"—an additional


element of pay to compensate him for the inevitable disturbances of Service life.
We do not need a committee to tell us this. Any soldier would tell the House and the Minister that pay is a factor in recruitment. Several factors come into play later in the life of a soldier. Pay may be an inducement to bring him in, in the first place, but after he I-as been in for some time it is the object under these regulations—and the regulations are specifically framed to provide for this—to encourage him to stay for a further period. Pay is, perhaps, not such a big factor at that stage. A bigger factor is some of the other matters which are "under consideration", "being thought about", "being discussed" but never being acted upon by the Government. There is the problem of accommodation, the problem of married quarters. We have been through all this before.
We have had one new idea brought out in a recent debate, again by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, to which I should like to draw the attention of the House and the Minister once again. That is, instead of confining Army families to Army married quarters, with all the trouble that arises every time a unit moves, consideration should be given to helping the soldier to pay for a home of his own where he can base his family, and have a firm base to which to look forward in the future.
That is the kind of consideration which comes into play and which affects a man's inclination to stay in or get out of the Army when he has been in for some time. Pay is the initial factor, the subsequent factors are the conditions and qualities of the family life which the Army allows him. That means finding a house for his family, educational facilities for his children and giving him opportunities for promotion and advance. By that, I do not mean simply promotion up the ladder to warrant rank alone, but promotion from warrant rank at an early age, when he may have some prospect of further promotion up the commissioned ladder.
We do not need a committee to tell us all this; to find out what needs to be done. That is what right hon. Gentlemen opposite know. That is what we on this side of the House know. What

we need now is somebody, who, knowing this, is prepared to do something about it. The Committee which has been set up will merely come forward with a list of grouses and grievances, but the main job will then remain with the Army Council and the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry, the job of devising methods of meeting these grievances and getting rid of these grouses.
But, as I have said, as we know these things now it would have been much more sensible if the Minister had come to the House with a list of proposals of what he is intending to do, instead of implementing the classical delaying tactic of pushing it all on to a committee. The Committee will not report for six months at the very earliest. By that time, after six months, some of these appalling recruiting figures will be worse and we will be getting closer and closer to the date when a decision will have to be made by the Government as to whether it intends to extend National Service, produce a selective draft, or really make an attempt to recruit the voluntary Regular Army which we still believe, based on a four-year programme, can be recruited to remove the need for the National Service element.
As I have said, pay is a factor here. I should like to ask one or two questions about what is happening now about pay. The Minister of Defence himself said that it was under consideration. There are many leaks going on from the Exchequer at the moment. Whether they be inspired or not, perhaps Sir William Haley could tell us. But there are two suggestions and I should like to know whether one is right or whether both are wrong. This said, on the one hand, that there is to be no increase in pay in an attempt to encourage Regular recruitment and that all that will come out of the bag is the £1 million, announced yesterday, by way of improved allowances in certain restricted circumstances.
Is that all that is to happen, or is it a fact that it has been ruled that the Army will have a ceiling of expenditure and that if it wishes to improve pay, as an inducement to recruitment, it will have to find the money required by economies in other sectors of Army administration and expenditure? We should like to know whether that is so.
If it is so, it opens up some very horrifying prospects. We have been told in debate after debate on the Army over many years that the Army's tail is being combed to get rid of unnecessary entanglements, that the Army is being streamlined, that the administrative machine is being refined and cut down. If it is now to be possible to have a further cut-down of the administrative tail to save more money so as to increase pay, then, of course, that is a categorical condemnation of a failure to do this job in the past—a job which, as I have said, we were assured in debate after debate was being done and, indeed, had been done.
If it is not possible to save the money within the ceiling, by further economies in administration, does it mean that the money will be found by economies in the provision of weapons? Are we to get back to the position of the Army during the 'thirties when, after a series of pay increases, although the soldier may have been relatively well paid, he was unarmed? Are we to have a repetition of the picture of the tactical exercises and manœuvres which used to take place on Salisbury Plain before the war, where one man ran about with a flag and, when asked what he was doing, said, "I, Sir, am an anti-tank gun"? The only difference today would be that he would say, "I, Sir, am an atomic cannon." Shall we be without the atomic gun as we were without the anti-tank gun in the 'thirties?
We want an answer to this question. Unless we get one, unless we are told clearly what the Government are proposing to do to raise the level of Regular recruitment, other than the setting up of committees; unless we are told, and it is proved to us, that action is being taken along these lines, then the only deduction we can make is that the Government are confident that they will not be sitting on those benches when the bill has to be paid.
It may sound as though I am challenging the good faith of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. If it does so, then the charge must stand. I am not imputing this charge directly to the two right hon. Gentlemen sitting opposite me at the moment, but I believe that unless evidence is produced to the contrary we on this side of the House are entitled to assume that the Government have decided that they

can get more electoral advantage out of a specious claim that they will end National Service than they are concerned about the strength of our defences.
Is it really that the Government are confident that they will not be in power when a decision has to be taken on what to do about creating an Army of the size which is felt to be necessary for our defence, and that this decision will have to be taken by a Labour Government? If so, it is a serious charge, and I am making it because all the evidence to date proves that on this issue the Government have been more concerned to play party politics than to safeguard the welfare and the defences of the country.

4.53 p.m.

Mr. George Wigg: I want to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War on his historic survey. I will not go over the ground again, because the Minister covered it admirably, and it was also covered in the interchanges which took place when we were endeavouring to define the scope of the debate. I shall, therefore, merely underline one thing which the right hon. Gentleman said.
It was clear that when the Select Committee had done its job, and when the Bill had passed through all its stages in this House, only a part of the work had been done and that the most important part remained to be carried out. The right hon. Gentleman told us about the work undertaken by his Department, and in the last few days I have endeavoured to acquaint myself with what has happened in practice by looking at some of the orders and regulations which have been produced. I started by looking at the Manual of Military Law.
During our debates on the Bill, I made the point that it was of vital importance that the Manual of Military Law should be rewritten in scholarly fashion and that the footnotes should be adequate and comprehensive. I said that because, when the Bill became an Act, it would be put into practice by officers all over the world whose only knowledge of military law would be that contained in the Manual. Therefore, I congratulate the Minister and, through him, those who are responsible for an absolutely first-class piece of work. I wish that every aspect of the War Office work was as


competent and as well done as has been the preliminary work of putting the Act into operation. If that were the case, we would have a much better Army than we have got.
Not only have the right hon. Gentleman and the War Office produced a first-class Part I of the Manual of Military Law, but they have gone a stage further. The sections of Part II which have been published show an imagination which is rare. They have also produced an admirable Unit Guide for those at the lowest level. I am not speaking in human terms but, in terms of the military hierarchy, of those who have to do the job. This admirable document creates a first-class broadsheet of the Act. As less than a year has passed since the Act was put into operation, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is much too early to look for snags. Some may be revealed in the next three or four years. If so, I suppose that the procedure will be to set up a Select Committee in 1960 or 1961, which would provide an opportunity for examining any snags.
We must never forget one thing. Here I must remind hon. and right hon. Members of something I said in the Select Committee. We are not only producing an Act of Parliament and an Army code. We are producing a code of living. We are producing something which is much more important than pay in the life of the soldier. The Army Act creates the atmosphere or the framework in which the entire Army functions. Of course, pay is important—particularly on Thursday night—but the provisions of the Act are also very important in determining the kind of Army we are to have. So I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman and the War Office on what I regard as an absolutely first-class piece of work.
In one respect we are in difficulty in discussing recruiting and the terms of service. The provisions of Section 22 are themselves clear—they give the Army Council power to issue regulations. The regulations under which we are working are those which were irregularly revealed to the House on 5th July. I have read and re-read the report of the Second Reading debate on the Army Enlistment Bill, and I have never read any debate which was more out of order since I have been a member of this House. I

am astonished that such irregular procedure could have occurred.
I regret to say that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) was deputising for me on that day. I do not congratulate him on his work, for had I been here I would certainly have raised my voice in protest against the House being informed on the Second Reading of one Bill about regulations which the Secretary of State had not then laid before the Army Council and which were not then promulgated. I have paid the right hon. Gentleman the courtesy of checking what was said on that day with the draft of the regulations and, as far as I can see, the picture is reasonably clear.
There is a new 22-year engagement—new in the sense that the right to opt out every three years was withdrawn from those who enlisted after 1st October, 1957, but inside the framework of what is essentially now a long-service Army. The right hon. Gentleman retains the three-year provision for a number of categories. As long as National Service is with us, men who are liable for call-up can enlist on a three-year engagement. The Brigade of Guards also retains historic privileges. This applies also to the Army Catering Corps, certain sections of the Royal Engineers and the Corps of Military Police.
But we have moved on within the framework of a twenty-two-year engagement from a three-year engagement to a basic engagement of six years. This is of the utmost importance. Hon. Members may want to follow the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Fienburgh) and see how the enlistment regulations will work out in the years ahead, and they should do this not only in terms of the specific commitments which the Government have undertaken in the Defence White Paper, but also in terms of the commitments which my right hon. and hon. Friends have entered into—commitments which I do not share.
The difference between the two Front Benches is very narrow. The Government entered into commitments the implications of which they did not understand. As the weeks have gone by and turned into months, as Christmas draws near, the Secretary of State for War no longer believes that we shall get rid of National Service. The truth has dawned


on him. There is no longer any belief in Government circles that we shall get rid of the National Service Regulations by 31st December, 1958.
It is the same on this side of the House. I want to be not less charitable to the Opposition Front Bench than I am to the Government Front Bench. Neither side is composed of crooks. They are all honest, honourable men. What is wrong with them is that they are just plumb stupid. They indulge in the higher mathematics when they have not learnt the multiplication tables.
Let me deal with the number of men who will join the Forces. Anybody who cares to look at the matter can see what I am about to say. One does not need to be the editor of the Daily Mirror to discover this, for the figures are all available. The size of the Regular Army that we shall get—there is no copyright here; I must be saying this for the millionth time—will be the number of men recruited multiplied by the number of years for which the men join.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North is a comparatively young man, and today he comes to the Dispatch Box and leads for the Labour Party for the first time. I congratulate him, but I wish he would do his homework. He makes exactly the same mistake as Front Bench speaker after Front Bench speaker has been making in every debate since my right hon. Friend and I first raised this subject at Whitsuntide, 1952. The test of the recruiting figures is not the number of men who join but how many man-years we recruit.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on having obtained a reply to an Oral Question tabled by me before I received it. However, if both are members of the same "club", naturally, both speak from the same brief. I am aware of this, and I took the precaution of getting a copy this morning, and, therefore, I am not at any disadvantage. I guessed what would happen. It happened in the debate in November. I table the Questions and some of my hon. Friends get the answers. However, there is no copyright in all this. I put down a Question because I wanted to know the answer to the problem of the recruiting figures. When I received the answer, although I was not given quite as much opportunity as my hon. Friend,

I hope I examined it a little more intelligently for comparisons. I should have thought that my hon. Friend would first have noted that the answers given were not really what I had asked for.

Mr. Fienburgh: We much admire the arrogance of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), although at times we find it a little tedious. I am perfectly capable—my hon. Friend knows it quite well—of exercising a multiplier which he and I have discussed time and time again. If I had been deploying a general argument in relation to commitments, I should have given the multiplier and saved my hon. Friend the trouble of going into his calculations as to how many man-years we have. But I was deploying an argument about the psychology of inducing men to join the Army, in which case the relevant point is how many men out of the general intake one can persuade to join the Army. That was the figure about which I was arguing. The way in which I used the figures was perfectly proper. If my hon. Friend wants it, I will give him the multiplier in about two minutes' time.

Mr. Wigg: I do not want to occasion my hon. Friend any inconvenience, If I am inconveniencing him, he has a remedy. He can leave the House. I have not asked him to stay. I do not remember a particular discussion about the matter between us. In any case, I propose to go on giving the answer. I hasten to add that this has nothing to do with commitments. Therefore, if my hon. Friend was speaking in terms of commitments, he needs to do a little more homework. What I am getting on to is not in terms of the multiplier. That is for the babies' class. We are moving on from the babies' class to Standard 3, in which the people have done their twice times table and have moved up the table.
I should have thought that if my hon. Friend wanted to deal with a Question of this kind he would have been experienced enough to read not only the Answer but the Question. My experience has taught me that if I ask a Question and the Minister gives me a little supplementary information, something that I have not asked him, I wonder why.
I originally asked the Minister to give me the recruiting figures for July, August, September and October, 1957, and those


for July, August, September and October, 1956. I first got an answer relating to the three months, July, August and September, in each of those two years. Only now have I got the October figures. I did not ask the Minister to give me an average. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman now supplies me with the average over the last four months gives me the clue. The answer I have now got is in addition to the answer that I got on 8th November, and the real comparison is not between October this year and October last year, but between October and September this year.
When the figures are looked at as part of a continuing process, if one turns them into a graph, the first conclusion that one comes to is that every year October is bad, November is bound to be worse and December will be even worse than that. However one converts the figures into man-years, the comparison is between 11,000 man-years in October, 1956, and 7,000 man-years in October, 1957. That is a devastating drop.
That is not all. In October—in presenting his case, my hon. Friend did not make this point—a big change occurred We were departing from the tradition of the three-year engagement, one of the most foolish steps taken by anyone pretending to understand the subject. We are moving from three-year engagements to six-year engagements. My hon. Friend said that he would give me the multiplier in two minutes, but the truth is that no one knows the answer. I can estimate it, and we can all estimate it. In my arguments with my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey), whose absence I very greatly regret, and whose recovery I hope will be speedy and complete, I have used a multiplier of ten. That is only because, characteristically, I wish to be generous to the right hon. Gentleman, for ten is not the multiplier at all, but I wanted to give him everything on his argument. If one multiplies by ten, it proves that the number that he is taking is unutterable nonsense. The multiplier before the war was eight. Those figures can be discovered on the briefest examination.
I had thought that the move from the three-year to the six-year engagement in the Army would produce a sharp rise in recruiting figures for the Navy and for the Air Force, but that has not happened.

Navy recruiting has increased from 206 men on a nine-year engagement in September to 270 in October—no great rise there. Royal Air Force recruiting on a three-year engagement has risen from 380 to 533; on a four-year engagement from 99 to 117; and on engagements of five to eight years, from 231 to 235, and on the nine-year engagement from 266 to 309.
There is no wonder that the right hon. Gentleman has evaded the subject. In September, 1,927 men enlisted in the Army on a three-year engagement, but in October the number fell by 900 to 1,020. The six-year engagement recruits numbered 133 in September and 489 in October, quite a sharp rise, but the nine-year engagement fell from 199 to 156. I am at all times prepared to put my figures to the test. One of the charges made against me by my own Front Bench—and I take it all in good part—is that I am guilty of wild exaggeration. What my hon. and right hon. Friends never do is to say where my figures are wrong or that my forecasts are incorrect. There is no particular cleverness; it is a very simple matter needing only diligence plus a little interest to produce the answers.
The moral of these figures is clear. Gresham's Law applies to the Army—the bad drives out the good. When we had the three-year engagement, it affected the number of recruits for a six-year engagement, and now that the three-year engagement has gone, the six-year engagement is affecting the nine-year engagement. The characteristic of all the figures is a rise in the numbers on six-year engagements with the move from nine-year engagements to six year engagements.
Although my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said with great daring that he could give me the multiplier in two minutes he cannot do so, and I am sure that my multiplier of ten was wildly generous and it is more than likely—and here is the warning for the Government—that the multiplier is between six and eight.
For what it is worth, I venture to make a prophesy. In the Army at present, there are about 160,000 men, of whom about half are on three-year engagements. The right hon. Gentleman was kind enough on 5th July to say how many men he thought would be retained on a


three-year engagement when National Service ended; in other words, to how many his amended three-year engagement applied. He said that it would be about 1,000 a year.
On the basis of those recruiting figures, the country is looking forward to a Regular Army of not more than 70,000 other ranks. It is perfectly clear that the 1,020 men now undertaking a three-year engagement will do so only for as long as National Service remains. The Secretary of State, who has better resources than I, says that the figure will be 85 men per month.
I want to refer to what the future holds for us. I worked out these figures with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) on 24th July, 1956, before a debate in which I dissented from my party, as I still dissent. My only interest in this matter is to try to get hon. Members and the rest of my fellow-countrymen to recognise facts which cannot be disputed. I have pleaded with the Government, and I plead with them again to publish a White Paper giving the facts so that there is no dispute between me and my right hon. Friends and no dispute between the two parties so far as the facts are concerned.
First, I want to refer to the Committee appointed yesterday. I was astonished that my own Front Bench did not react to the speech of the Minister of Defence on 7th November. The Government had committed themselves to the abolition of National Service—they had taken the decision in the early part of the year, and the decision is now almost a year old. It is true that the Secretary of State for War, on 31st July in a debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill, repeated what the Government said in the Defence White Paper—that they hoped to get the recruits. If they did not get the recruits, they left their hands free to get the numbers by other methods.
We then had the announcement that Sir James Grigg was to preside over a committee of inquiry. I have a tremendous respect for Sir James Griggs, who was a great war-time Secretary of State for War. He may have been a bad House of Commons man, but he was a civil servant who answered the call of duty with no regard to his personal advantage. I have

always thought that it was among the meanest acts of the war-time Coalition Government that they did not provide for the payment of his pension, for one of the consequences of answering the call of duty which he suffered was that he forfeited his Civil Service pension rights.
I have tremendous respect for him, but for reasons of which I half approve and which I certainly understand, if there was one man responsible for a great number of difficulties in the post-war Army, it was Sir James Grigg who was Secretary of State during those critical war years. Of course, the war had continued for six years and he was faced with all the problems of an Army fighting a war. Yet it was perfectly clear that inquiries should have been made and policies begun, so that as soon as the war ended recruiting of a post-war Regular Army could have been begun. Those measures were not put in hand.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) will remember that when he was Secretary of State for War I badgered him about the re-establishment of Section A of the Army Reserve, the establishment of a supplementary reserve, and about the use of leaves and inducements to get men to stay in and to join the Regular Army all on the lines of what happened after the First World War.
To appoint Sir James Grigg, who stood as a Conservative, as a senior supporter of the Conservative Administration, to be in charge of the whitewashing is monstrous. I was astonished at the appointment, but no protest came from my hon. Friends at the conclusion of the debate. Because of that, I nestled close to the grapevine and tried to find out what was happening. I put down Questions asking who were the members of the Committee, what its terms of reference were, and, above all, when it would report.
The 64,000 dollar question is: When will it report? Even if the committee were composed of the wisest men ever—men who knew all the answers to every question—and if at the tinkling of the bell they had met in a room, produced the answers and handed them to the Minister of Defence, and if, forthwith, with an alacrity unheard of in Government circles, the proposals were put into operation, is there any hon. Member who would say that any recommendation


by that committee could have any effect at all upon the problems now facing the Government?
The existing National Service legislation expires on 31st December, 1958. The Government have one year. It will be monstrous if they go on gambling with young men's futures after 1st January, 1959. At the moment, every young man born after 31st December, 1940, has been told by the Government that he will not be called up. Yet the conclusion to be drawn from the recruiting figures points only in one direction. Unless the country is prepared to accept an Army of less than 100,000 men, some form of National Service must continue.
Yesterday, I put down a Question asking who would serve on the committee; what were its terms of reference; whether its report would be published, and when it was expected that it would report. I got an Answer, which appears in HANSARD this morning, the concluding sentence of which is:
I cannot say how long it will take the Committee to prepare its Report, which will, of course, be published."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1957; Vol. 579, c. 16.]
That is a bit of a staggerer. My view is that even if it had reported yesterday it would not have had any effect. But I was anxious to find out about it, and again I nestled close to the grapevine and rang up the Ministry of Defence and asked if they would be kind enough to hand me the hand-out that they had given the Press that night. I hold in my hand the results of my inquiry, sent to me with the compliments of the Private Secretary. It contains one sentence which is ruled through, but which I can read, and which says:
It is hoped that the Committee will be able to report in about six months' time.
I do not know what happens in the War Office or the Ministry of Defence, but if this had happened in my unit somebody would have had his hat off on the following morning. It is not clever for the Minister to say that he cannot tell me when the Committee will report and then give the Press a handout which says that the report will arrive in about six months' time. I hope that hon. Members will see the significance of this.
I read the newspapers this morning. One—the Daily Mirror—contained the statement that the Committee would report in six months' time. What an

inconvenient date! The Estimates will have gone; the Defence White Paper will have gone, and then Sir James Grigg and his committee will report. It will report a strange conclusion, namely, that the social trends are such that the Government will not get their recruits. On the eve of the Recess a draft Order will be brought in to extend National Service, and we shall all go off on our holidays and that will be that.
That is the picture. When I examined the composition of the Committee, I was staggered. There was one name that I certainly thought would have been there—the name of Mr. Sydney Rogerson—a very distinguished man who, when the Government came to power in 1951, gave his services free of charge to the War Office at the personal request of the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). Mr. Sydney Rogerson, for whom I have the greatest respect, is an honorary colonel of a Territorial unit and a distinguished writer and thinker in connection with military matters. There is not a man in this country who knows more about the Army and its public relations and the problems of getting recruits than does Mr. Rogerson.
Why was not he invited? I suggest that the Government did not invite him to serve because he knows the truth. He has been in the War Office and has left it to go back to industry. The Government, therefore, invited the editor of the Daily Mirror—Mr. Hugh Cudlipp. I hope that he will like it. Prominence is given to this Committee in the Daily Mirror this morning. Mr. Cudlipp is the biggest stooge in Fleet Street. He has been put on to the Committee to provide acceptable answers in order to get the Government out of an awkward spot.
The controversies which surrounded the Bill were party ones. I played a small part in them, together with a former Member—I hope that he will soon return—Mr. Geoffrey Bing. He did the theory and I did the practice. He was in charge of operations, and I was working in the cookhouse. I was not even one of the P.B.I. This was just a humble job, but it did the trick. I must say that I would sooner be a stooge to Geoffrey Bing than to the right hon. Gentleman. At least I should be pursuing the cause of truth and not seeking to disguise it.
This country is in a difficult spot. How difficult it is hon. Members will find if they read the Annual Reports of the Army, the last of which was published in February, 1939. The Government were in difficulties about recruiting then. Various suggestions were made and various results obtained, but at what a price! Came the outbreak of the war and there was no barbed wire, no entrenching equipment, and few armoured fighting vehicles. The Army, the calibre of whose men was as good as it was in their fathers' time, was short of equipment.
And what about Suez? The day before the Suez operation I said that those on both sides of the House who cheered should be ashamed of themselves because they were asking men to fight in Suez—with what? With insufficient tank landing ships and not enough air transport. We get terribly wound up in our debates about the atomic bomb, but we do not know the difference between a B.47 and a B.52, and we do not care. Do we stop to think what the present infantryman is armed with? Ours is the only infantry which is still armed with the weapon that its fathers fought with.
In our defence and Service debates we become stratospheric; the further we get from reality the better we are pleased. That is why I fought like a tiger to get these debates on the Service Departments nearer and nearer to reality. That is the only way out. I have a profound belief in the genius of my fellow countrymen. My view, reading from as much history as has been afforded to me, is that throughout our long history when we have seen the truth we have never failed to act. What the House has done in the twelve years that I have been here is to act as a filling for the pillow. Any soporific is good enough, or any escape from reality. What we want is the naked truth. We do not want to hear recruiting figures produced this afternoon.
I criticise my hon. Friends because they are as far from reality when they talk about getting rid of National Service inside the framework of the four-year plan as are hon. Members opposite. The only difference between them is that hon. Members opposite now know the truth. The Minister does not believe that he

will get rid of National Service, but my hon. Friends still believe that he will. The truth is that the Government cannot do so.
Of course we should try to get rid of National Service and try to produce the best defence we can upon the most economical terms. That is why I was proud to serve with my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shin-well). When we started out together in 1952, we said that if no other countries inside the Commonwealth or N.A.T.O. would undertake a period of two years' National Service, we could not do so indefinitely. We have to get rid of conscription, and we can get rid of it, but do not let us have any "slush" about getting rid of it in four years. It will take ten years at least, even if we start now. Do not let us buttress the Government in these slimy efforts to appoint committees to produce answers which will have an irrelevant result.
I make this suggestion which I have discussed with my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington, although I have not his authority to say it. The House should submit its Estimates, and even this Bill, for annual confirmation to a committee of secrecy. The precedents are contained in Erskine May. Matters could be submitted to such a committee after consultation between the two Front Benches, and the committee should be composed of hon. Gentlemen from both sides of the House. They would be free to consider the Estimates and kindred matters free from the trammels of public opinion, and would be given an opportunity to place duty to the country before any political advantage.

5.32 p.m.

Major H. Legge-Bourke: I had not intended to take part in this debate unless I felt absolutely obliged to, but I did not visualise that we should be allowed to go so wide as the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) has taken us. I do not regret it and I agree with the concluding statements in his speech. I would criticise the hon. Member only of trying to monopolise the subject. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is the only person who does not wish to see the same things recurring as occurred in 1939 and, to some extent, in 1914. We do not wish to see an Army inadequately equipped. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Fienburgh) said, and I


agree, that the last thing we want to see are men running about with flags and calling themselves "atomic artillery" or anything else.
Having acted as "soldier's friend" at courts-martial on one or two occasions during my military service, I join with hon. Members who have congratulated the Secretary of State and those in the War Office on being responsible for eliminating at last those sheaves of amendments which one used to stick in volumes of the Rules of Procedure and the Army Act and in Part I of the Manual of Military Law. They have rendered a great service to all ranks in the Army, although I sometimes think that even in this House we are apt to pay too much attention to courts-martial and not enough to those who behave themselves, because courts-martial are usually concerned with those who have not behaved too well.
I remember an occasion during the last war, at one of the more base areas—"base" is a word which can be used in more senses than one about that part of the world—someone came from the War Office to try to raise our morale, and said that one of the great difficulties about home leave was that eight people were awaiting court-martial and could not be conveyed home. They would have to be taken home before anybody could be sent on leave, no matter how long he had been in the desert. That attitude of mind on the part of the Adjutant-General's Branch is not uncommon and I feel that it is always to be deplored.
I join with hon. Members who have congratulated my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) and the members of his Committee who did such wonderful work in amending the Army Act. They have done a service to the Army and to this House. I have no wish to intervene in the internecine strife which has been raging on the other side of the House this afternoon. I believe that neither the hon. Member for Dudley nor the hon. Member for Islington, North have really faced the issue. Is it inevitable that, were we to raise the rates of pay sufficiently to attract enough men into the Regular Army, it would set in train a wave of inflation which would be quite uncontrollable by Parliament?
The hon. Member for Dudley has taken the view for a long time that pay, no matter how high it be, will not get enough men initially. So long as pay was not put above what the man was getting in civil life, the hon. Gentleman is probably right. But what has never happened in the history of this country is for the Regular soldier to be paid more than he would get in civil life. I agree with the hon. Member for Islington, North that it is pay which gets a man into the Army initially, but that it is the amenities which keep him in once he has been recruited.
To have a Regular Army of a size sufficient to meet our commitments, we need men over and above the proportion of the younger section of the community who will always join the Regular Army. I am forced to the conclusion that the only way to get them is to pay the soldier not as much as, but more than, he would receive in civil life. That is why I say that the hon. Member for Dudley is being a little unfair in trying to monopolise this matter. I should be prepared to do that, even though it meant telling the Trades Union Congress that wage claims would not be granted for the next three years.
I believe that the only way to defend this country is to ensure that our Regular Army, particularly the infantry, is of sufficient strength to enable us to play our full part in keeping the peace. To me, the important point seems to be the keeping of the peace. Today my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that he hoped the day would never come when the various agreements over the use of nuclear aircraft in this country would have to be put into force. I agree. The important thing is to prevent war from happening and the best way to do that is to have a sufficiently large infantry. Above all others, the infantryman is necessary, even though he be equipped only with weapons similar to those with which his grandfather was equipped. That is better than having none at all. The real problem is whether we are prepared to pay almost any price for men and materials to preserve the peace. That is the issue before the country.

Mr. Wigg: Before he differs from me would the hon. and gallant Gentleman look at this problem not as an academic exercise, but as a practical problem? Let


us assume that the Government were willing to do what the hon. and gallant Gentleman says and pay the same rates—or even more—as a man could receive in civilian wages. Whatever rate it decided on, does not the hon. and gallant Member appreciate that we are working on the basis of a six-year engagement and that it would be six years before we got the full result? The Government are faced with the problem of waiting, not six years, but one. The Government are overlooking the time factor. I do not think that they can put it right, but even if they could, they could not do it before 31st December, 1958.

Major Legge-Bourke: I appreciate what the hon. Member says about the problem of man-years. I agree that whatever be the time, whether six years or eight that was the bracket the hon. Member gave in his speech—the problem at the end of the period will depend a great deal on whether we have the initial recruits. That is a resolution of the difference between the hon. Member for Dudley and the hon. Member for Islington, North.
We can have all the theories we like over this matter, but if we have not tile men joining the Army who believe that it is a good profession to join, then we shall be in difficulties. The argument of the hon. Member for Dudley boils down to the fact that the few men we get will produce a certain low figure at the end of the period for which they are prepared to join.

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Wigg rose—

Major Legge-Bourke: I would rather not give way again. I listened to the hon. Member's speech with great attention. He has had a good innings, and I do not want to delay the House by constantly giving way.
May I return to the theme which I was discussing before the hon. Member's intervention? There has always been a great misunderstanding among parents and young people of what pay a soldier receives when he joins the Army. The trouble is that so much of it is in kind. I am a little concerned about the announcement made yesterday of improvements in allowances. I welcome this measure of improvement and hope

that there will be a chance to make further improvements, but I take it that these measures are primarily designed to retain in the Army men who have already joined rather than to attract others into the Army. Whatever the intention, that will be the effect.
I still believe that the one factor which will encourage more men to join is that of pay. That is the primary factor. I know that some hon. Members on both sides of the House feel that if we put up the pay of the Army the floodgates will nave been opened which will make it impossible ever again for the Government of the day to control inflation. In my opinion, the choice before the country is clear. To this extent, I agree with the hon. Member for Dudley. Either we shall have to increase the pay of the soldier or we shall have to continue National Service, in other words, conscription, in one form or another. I honestly do not believe that we shall get enough volunteers unless the pay is raised very substantially.
If the price of putting up that pay were to be opening the floodgates of wage claims all over the country, and if the trade unions said, "Because the pay of the Army has been increased therefore our basic pay must go up," then I do not think that any Government could face that situation and hope to keep the economy under control. That is the issue before the country.
I wish it were possible to pay the British soldier the rate of pay which ought to be paid to anybody who is prepared to sacrifice everything he has to keep this country properly defended. Nevertheless, we must face the reality that the rest of the country is not prepared to do that at the moment. What distresses me most is that apparently no acclimatisation, no attempt to change that attitude, is being carried out by the Government or anyone else. I have made speeches in the House year after year trying to make this case and I frankly admit that there is very little support for the view which I have expressed.
I believe that that is a pity, because it means that the people's sense of proportion is so unbalanced that they do not understand that the best way of preventing a third world war is to ensure that there are men on the ground to keep the peace. The best man to do that always


has been and will continue to be the British infantryman. Equally, if war broke out, with all the atomic weapons we can think of, I still believe that, ultimately, the ending of that war, the maintenance of the peace which one hopes would follow it and the elimination of confusion during that war would again fall on the British infantryman more than upon anyone else. Yet he is the man to whom this country is not prepared to pay the wage that it ought to pay.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Would the hon. and gallant Member pay to the soldier the wage of the highest-paid miner?

Major Legge-Bourke: Personally, I think he is doing just as good a job for this country, if that is what the hon. Member has in mind. If that were the only way to get him into the Army, I should pay it.

Mr. Hughes: That is £1,000 a year.

Major Legge-Bourke: It may be. I honestly believe that the British Army is quite as important to the safety of the country as is the coal mining industry. There are grades in the coal mining industry just as there are ranks in the Army, and, rank by rank, I should certainly be prepared to pay the soldier quite as much as the miner is paid. Let us not forget that, to the best of my knowledge, there have never been overtime rates in the Army. Of course, there have been special allowances for overseas service, in the same way as in some industries there is danger money.

Mr. Hughes: Pay overtime rates in the Army.

Major Legge-Bourke: I know that the hon. Member has very close experience inside the Army. I believe that the strongest conscientious objector in the House would find it extremely difficult to work a system of overtime in the Army. I believe that the hon. Member and I are on a frivolous point and I do not wish to pursue it with him. I enjoy having an interchange with him now and again, but let us try to be serious about this for a moment.
The point I am trying to make is that the country must face up to this situation. If it is not prepared to pay the Regular soldier, to get him into the Army

in the first instance, a wage which will attract him, then, unless we have a major change in the feeling of this country and have a voluntary restriction over the years in all the other civilian interests, there can be only one answer in the end—and I believe that that is to have some form of selective military service in the future.
When the declaration was made that we should end National Service and work towards that end—I know that the Minister of Defence made it clear that if the policy does not succeed then some other form of recruiting is inevitable—I hoped that it would mean that for the first time the British Army would be adequately paid. I have a horrible feeling now that it does not mean that. The reason it does not mean it is that, if it had meant it, it would also have meant that the floodgates of inflation would have been opened wide again, simply because this country has such a warped sense of proportion that it does not see the importance of preserving peace by having an adequate Regular Army.
That is the tragic position today. For my part, all I can do is to continue to give my support to those who believe that the Army has never been adequately paid to get the men we need to do the job. The miracle is that year after year after year men of the high quality that we see in all ranks in the Army have joined. The problem now is not to get such men as these, who will join in any case, but to get the additional men.
Things being as they are today, the only factor which will attract most young men quickly is the rate of pay which they will get when they join. When the young man looks at what he will get in the Army and what he will get if he stays in civilian life, the answer is obvious. There is a difference of several pounds in cash each week. Unless we are prepared to put up the pay of the private soldier, when he joins, by several pounds a week, we shall not get the number of men we need. For that reason, it seems to me that the country must wake up quickly to the choice now before it: either it will pay its Army or it will have National Service until kingdom come.

5.48 p.m.

Mr. F. Bellenger: When the Secretary of State was considering in the quietness of his office what he would


say today, I do not suppose he imagined he would have to listen to a debate such as we have had. Our regret is that, even within the limited confines of such a Motion as this, the right hon. Gentleman did not take the opportunity this afternoon to give a lead to the House. He appears on television and he allows himself to be questioned by soldiers who want to stay in the Army and by soldiers who do not want to stay in the Army—what sort of propaganda is this?—and we are therefore entitled to ask why, on an occasion when we are being asked to continue the Army for another year, he cannot tell us something about that Army and how he can maintain it.
After all, we are being asked today to keep an Army in being, and my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg, tells us that the recruiting figures are going down and down and will reach rock bottom. I am perhaps not in possession of the multiplier of all these mathematical terms, and I do not believe that the Army will disintegrate to that extent. I am one who believes that under certain conditions we can get more recruits than my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley suggests, It may be that he is right—I do not know—I only go on my belief. I know what was happening before the war when, under Lord Nathan, recruiting drives and meetings were held and all sorts of people got together in an effort to increase the numbers in the Territorial Army. Hon. Members may say that those methods are old-fashioned, but to those who have studied how the Army was recruited in the old days, the interesting thing is that there was a more or less regular pattern all through the years to the middle of the last century.
I know that recruiting was based on the agricultural industry in those days and that the low rates of pay of agricultural labourers caused them to go into the Army to better their chances. I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have taken the opportunity this afternoon to tell us something of the difficulties he had and to invite us to help him. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley. His has been one of the lone voices, cutting right across the party lines we generally follow in this House and advocating some all-party group or committee

to investigate these problems. Many of us do not know the negative side of them, although some of us can imagine it, and I am certain many hon. Members do not know a lot about the positive work that is being done at present to induce recruits to the Army.
The other day I had the opportunity of going to Windsor to see the modern barracks there for Household troops. If those hon. Members interested in Army matters saw some of the modern barrack accommodation which is being offered, I am sure that they would be satisfied that at least in that respect in so far as it is being got on with quickly, the Army is trying to do something which will help to induce recruits to join or stay longer than perhaps some of the other methods which have been advocated, methods which I am bound to say to the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) are fantastically impossible. It is not the slightest good talking about paying the Army more than the highest rate of pay in civil life. That is not the answer, unless we are to have inflation running riot.
There is a point to which I would draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman. It is one which I thought very topical, which he could have mentioned on his own initiative. I am very concerned with discipline in the Army, and we are discussing a disciplinary Act. What has the right hon. Gentleman to say about his forced amalgamation of regiments? Here we have a situation in which two famous Scottish regiments—I will not say they are almost in revolt, because that would be an extravagance—are now engaged in wordy warfare—

Mr. Wigg: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. While being in no way unfriendly to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), are we not establishing a precedent which is clearly out of order? I submit that it is out of order to discuss the amalgamation of infantry regiments, because such amalgamations are not carried out under the provisions of the Army Act.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): It is in order; A and Q is all in order.

Mr. Wigg: Mr. Speaker has ruled that we could discuss only what is in the Army Act, and there is no provision in that Act


for the compulsory transfer of soldiers inside the same corps. The only amalgamations which have taken place are inside an existing corps.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I was not present when Mr. Speaker gave this Ruling, but, for greater accuracy, he has given me a copy of it. A and Q is in order, and general staff matters are not in order. National Service men are not to be discussed, except in regard to discipline, and pay is out of order because it is governed by Royal Warrant. I did allow a little discussion on pay, because that is linked with the question of not getting recruits, but if the hon. Member said it comes under A and Q, it is in order.

Mr. Bellenger: Mr. Speaker ruled that A and Q matters were in order, and I should have thought that this matter was in order.

Mr. Wigg: I thought Mr. Speaker gave a definition of matters which come under A and Q because he wanted to make it clear that G matters are excluded. As this matter is of some importance, not only for this but for future occasions, while I have not the slightest wish to obstruct my right hon. Friend, would you be good enough. Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to submit the matter to Mr. Speaker, because there is no provision in the Army Act for the matters my right hon. Friend wishes to discuss?

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: I think there is great danger here. This is going to be used as a precedent for many years to some. This is the first time we have had a discussion of this nature. I would appeal to you earnestly, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to consider very carefully about establishing a precedent which may become wider and wider as years go by. I entirely support the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in this matter, I do not believe that under the disciplinary Army Act which we are discussing the amalgamation of regiments should come under discussion.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I will certainly pass on to Mr. Speaker what has been said, but in my view it is in order to discuss amalgamation, and I am going to allow it.

Mr. Bellenger: I am obliged to hon. Members who have attempted to limit this discussion, because I am sure that

next year the right hon. Gentleman would expect us to accept this on the nod, but we want him to be a little more forthcoming when he is asking for very wide powers as he is asking today. I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have been fully cognisant of the danger to discipline in the Army of incidents like this which have occurred because of the amalgamation of two famous Scottish regiments. I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman and understand his difficulties, but, having heard a little about how the matter is being discussed and how the C.I.G.S. had to go to Edinburgh for three days to straighten it out,—

Mr. John Hare: On a point of accuracy, I do not think the C.I.G.S. visited Edinburgh at all.

Mr. Bellenger: Evidently my information is wrong.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I understand that recruiting is affected by the Act we are discussing. Certainly where I live I think recruiting will be affected by the amalgamations suggested, and I think they are just as well within order as discussions about pay which affect recruiting.

Mr. Bellenger: I apologise if I have taken the name of the C.I.G.S. in vain, but there is no doubt that inside the Army there has been considerable ferment about the amalgamation of these two regiments. I understand the difficulties, but here we have a sort of coalition between both sides of the House in which Labour and Conservative M.P.s beard the right hon. Gentleman in his own den—I hope I am not exaggerating—and try to represent that point of view, which I believe is widely held in a certain part of Scotland, that he should not do this. I read in the newspapers—I cannot be quite sure whether my information is correct—that there was a meeting, attended by something like 20,000, to protest against this amalgamation.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: As one who represents one of the regiments concerned, may I acquaint my right hon. Friend with the fact that this trouble has not been inside the Army but has been fomented from outside? May I also bring into this matter some sense of proportion by saying that in the last three months no large crowds have attempted to join the Army in Glasgow but only 15 people?

Mr. Bellenger: My main concern in mentioning this matter is about the effect upon discipline in the Army of incidents such as I have just related. Whether the right hon. Gentleman can avoid them, I do not know, but I should have thought it possible to appeal to the patriotism, the loyalty and the discipline of people to discuss these things in quieter circumstances and not in the full blare of publicity, as has happened.
I remember when amalgamations took place before. We had a reference today to the nomenclature of some of the armoured regiments. The hon and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) will know more about this matter than I do. Famous regiments were amalgamated, and they have accepted the position because it was the best for the Army. I do not know whether there is tight on the side of those two Scottish regiments, but I suspect that the A side—if I may use your expression. Mr. Deputy-Speaker—has not operated as efficiently as it might have been able to in other circumstances.
The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that, although it may be unpleasant to bring this subject up on the Floor of the House, it is disturbing to all lovers of the Army's reputation for disciplined loyalty to the orders that go out from the Army Council. There was a feeling in my day that what the Army Council did was always right, but I shall not say that we must follow the old precept of Crimean days of not arguing, the soldier's duty being, "not to reason why but merely to do or die". My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley and I have advocated for many years the setting up of a military affairs committee. The idea was rejected, particularly by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) when he was Prime Minister. Like my hon. Friend, who is not weary in supporting lost causes, I shall still continue advocating it.
The future of the Army is not to be made or unmade by desultory debates like this on recruiting without any lead whatever from the Secretary of State. I believe, with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, that hon. Members who are interested in these matters we can see how many there are by looking around the Chamber on any occasion when we are discussing military matters

—should get together, irrespective of party, and form a committee to investigate such matters as the problem of recruiting. It could see whether positive suggestions could be made. Again, like my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, I do not believe that the Committee which has been set up under Sir James Grigg will produce a better solution than the House in the debates it has had on previous occasions.
I hope that the Minister will in future take the opportunity of an occasion like this, when he is asking the House to give him the power to set up or to carry on his Regular Army for another year—whether it is a small Army or the larger Army which my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley has set himself to achieve—to use it as a method of publicity and propaganda, by telling the House the form of Army he wants. I will not add "the size he wants," because that consideration is outside the confines of the debate and is more appropriate to the Estimates Committee at the beginning of next year. The right hon. Gentleman could deal with matters like the amalgamation of regiments, which is causing a lot of disturbance in the minds of people inside and outside the Army, and what he is doing to overcome the difficulties.
Today's debate lays the foundation for the procedure to be followed in future years. I would be the last one to wish to expand our debates into something much wider, but I recognise, as we all must, that the Motion is narrowly drawn. Many hon. Members do not recognise that the House is being asked to do something more than merely to approve an order; we are being asked to set up and carry on the Army for the following year. The right hon. Gentleman should give a lead and not wait for it to come from the back benches. His historical survey was appropriate, but he cannot repeat it every year when he moves this Motion. The House is entitled to something more than a historical survey such as that which the right hon. Gentleman has given us.

6.7 p.m.

Mr. James Simmons: If the Motion that we are debating today is to be brought in every five years I cannot find any provision laying down


what is to be done during those five years, particularly by way of appointing a committee so that at the end of the five years the appropriate Amendments can be made. These annual discussions will be of guidance to those who are interested in these matters so they can make the necessary Amendments at the end of the period.

Mr. Hare: I said in my opening speech that the Government had agreed to set up a Select Committee to discuss possible Amendments to the Bill at the end of the five-year period.

Mr. Simmons: I am aware of that, but I do not know whether that pledge which has been given on behalf of one Government will be carried out by any other Government, and whether it would not have been better, from the point of view of the Army, to have in the Act some reference to the matter. The explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman is an indication that another Select Committee will definitely be set up if it does its work as well as the last one we shall all be perfectly satisfied.
The Minister has already told us that alterations have been carried out, and this raises an important point in my mind. Are we to have a lot of amending Acts and cross-references? Could we not have a statement from the Minister that really up-to-date documents will be put into the Library? I receive from the House of Commons Library copies of Army documents which are a disgrace, as being completely out of date. Could we not have copies of all regulations, including the Queen's Regulations and Orders? Can they not be made available to hon. Members in the Library of the House so that when we are considering amending Orders under the Army Act, 1955, we shall be able to go to the Library and obtain the references that we want?
The suggestion that, if necessary, there might be alterations was emphasised in the Report of the Select Committee, where it is rather interesting to read:
In reviewing Part I of the Army and Air Force Acts and the other Sections above referred to, Your Committee have had particularly in mind throughout that the Regular Army and Royal Air Force no longer consist solely of volunteers but now comprise large numbers of young National Service men, doing their compulsory training. Your Committee have also had in mind that the Army and

Royal Air Force are no longer confined to men but that women are full members of each Service, both as commissioned officers and enlisted persons.
Having regard to these two points above, it will he appreciated how different the Army and Royal Air Force of today are from the armed forces of the Crown for whom the code of discipline embodied in Part I of the Army and Air Force Acts was originally intended. Your Committee have, therefore, found it necessary to recommend very considerable changes in the clauses which they have considered.
If the Government's plans are carried out, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) proves to have been unduly pessimistic, we shall again be changing the Act to deal with an Army composed entirely of volunteers, it has, therefore, become very important that year by year we should go thoroughly into the 1955 Act in order to give the necessary guidance to those who are to have the task of amending it after five years.
Perhaps I may point out that of the 224 Sections in the Act, only 23 deal with enlistment and recruiting, on which we seem to have been concentrating so much this afternoon, but there are other matters in the Act to which the attention of the House should be drawn. We want a broader and wider discussion of this Measure, rather than just a series of speeches which would be more appropriate to the Army Estimates.
The Act deals with the discipline of the Army as well as with recruitment. As has been said earlier, an Army without discipline would be of very little use to those commanding it or to the nation. For instance, billeting is mentioned, and in this context the necessity for that might be absolutely useless were we to suffer an atomic bomb attack and towns and villages were razed to the ground. Although there might have to be provision for the holes to be tested for radioactivity, an atomic war would entirely change that part of the Act dealing with billeting.
I want now to ask a few detailed questions, because I think that we should probe conditions in the Army, and improve them from time to time when we are revising every five years. In Section 3 (3), we are told that
A soldier of the regular forces may at any time be transfered by order of the competent military authority from one corps to another.


And subsection (4) reads:
Where, in pursuance of the last foregoing subsection, a soldier of the regular forces is transferred to a corps in an arm or branch of the service different from that in which he was previously serving, the competent military authority may by order vary the conditions of his service.…
That needs looking at very carefully. What right have we to transfer a man from one corps to another without his consent? After all, when a man enlists in the Army, there is a contract, and a contract should be kept by both parties. There cannot be just a one-way traffic here, so that when it is convenient for the Army to shove a man out of the Royal Army Medical Corps into, say, the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, or from the Royal Army Service Corps into another corps, it can be done without so much as a "By your leave."
It must be remembered that the Army we visualise is one in which a man will enlist for nine, twelve or twenty-two years. In most cases, the man will enlist as a craftsman, and his time in the Army will fit him for his later return to civilian employment in his trade. Why, therefore, should we lay down in the Army Act that the contract entered into between the Army Council and the soldier can be broken by the Army Council, but not by the soldier? If the soldier breaks the contract, it is called desertion, absence without leave, or something like that. That is a matter that should be looked into by the Secretary of State.
Section 57 (1) lays down the penalty for
any person subject to military law who refuses to swear an oath when duly required by a court-martial to do so.
Has a soldier no right of affirmation? It is not mentioned here. When a new Member goes to that Box to be introduced, he has the right either to take the oath or to affirm, and I think that the same right should be given to an enlisted man when appearing before a court-martial. Is there any Order in Council, or Order of the Army Council that makes that position clear?
Section 57 (1, d) tells us of what happens when a witness
refuses to answer any question which a court-martial has lawfully required him to answer.
That, again, raises an important point. In the Army, we believe in comradeship.

If a man wants to shield his friend and keep a discreet silence, why should he not be allowed to do so?
On the other hand, he may not have legal representation before the court-martial. I do not know whether the Secretary of State would lay down that the soldier's friend in the proceedings should be an accredited legal representative, but I think that he ought to. If, at a court-martial, a man has no legal representative and has to answer any question put to him, he may be tricked into saying something that he should not say.
Section 57 (1, e) refers to the person who
wilfully insults any person…".
What is the definition of "insult"? When I was in the Army I knew of something called dumb insolence—the raising of an eyebrow, the twitching of an eye, or the shrugging of a shoulder. Let us have a better definition—

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: Referring to the hon. Gentleman's query about the oath, Rule of Procedure No. 34 says that a person is permitted to make a solemn affirmation instead of swearing on oath.

Mr. Simmonds: I am very much obliged to the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but there, again, we have the Rules of Procedure and we have the Army Act, each dealing with different obligations. There should be some cross-reference—a footnote.

Mr. Wigg: If my hon. Friend will obtain Part I of the Manual of Military Law, which is, after all, what the units have to rely on, he will find it admirably cross-referenced.

Mr. Simmons: But, Mr. Speaker, you will not allow me to discuss the Manual to Military Law. I am speaking of the Army Act, and we here considering putting the Army Act into operation for another twelve months. We ought to make sure that those whose only reference will be to the Army Act are made fully aware of all the facts and put in possession of the information given by the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer). There should be a footnote in the Army Act, to lead to greater clarity.

Mr. Ede: Can my hon. Friend tell me whether the private soldier has a right of access to the Manual of Military Law? Is a copy of it hung up in the wet canteen for him to consult?

Mr. Simmons: It is a long time since I was there, of course, and things have probably altered. I never found a copy of the Manual of Military Law in the depôt library.

Mr. Wigg: Perhaps I may help my hon. Friend by saying that the price is 15s., obtainable from the Stationery Office.

Mr. Simmons: Yes, but when I was serving the pay was 1s. a day, and 15s. would have been more than two weeks' pay. I do not think we shall get very much further in that direction. I ask that something should be done to make the matter clear in the next copy of the Army Act, which will come up for discussion twelve months' hence.
In Section 64, I come back to an old "King Charles's head" of mine. The Section provides for an officer to be cashiered if he behaves in a manner unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. First, why should there be one law for the officer and one for the private soldier and N.C.O.? Why should the punishment given to the officer be, "All right, you can clear out", a thing which many an ordinary "Tommy" would be only too glad to be told. He does not get a chance; they send him to the "glasshouse," where he trots round for so many hours a day. The officer can just slide out.
The wording of the Section is nauseating. It is class-conscious poppycock. It assumes that only officers can be gentlemen, and it should be taken out of the Act altogether. I ask the House to listen to the words:
Every officer subject to military law who behaves in a scandalous manner, unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, shall, on conviction by court martial, be cashiered.
Why "an officer and a gentleman"? Why should those words be in the Act at all? What is the inference—that only officers are gentlemen? I beg the Secretary of State to consider whether the wording of it could not be made more in line with modern thought and ideas than the nauseating snobbery and hypo-

crisy that we have in the Section as it stands.

Mr. Robert Jenkins: Would the hon. Gentleman extend that condemnation to the custom in this House of referring to Members as "honourable Gentlemen"?

Mr. Simmons: We all refer to each other as hon. Gentlemen. There is no class distinction, party distinction or rank distinction at all. In the eyes of Mr. Speaker, we all have equal rights, except that, if we are Privy Councillors, we have more than equal rights—a thing which many hon. Members have referred to in the past.
I come now to consider field punishment. I did a certain amount of work in attacking first field punishment. In my day, No. 1 field punishment in the Army was the most barbarous kind of punishment ever devised. In Egypt, I have seen men pegged out on the sand, by rope and tent pegs in the form of a cross, for no greater crime than having a dirty cap badge or losing a water bottle. I have seen men crucified to the gun wheel. In those days, on active service, such punishments were inflicted for the most trivial of offences. For men to be confined in those conditions under shell fire was nothing less than sheer murder.
I should like to know what in the Act modifies the old form of No. I field punishment. I exposed it on the public platform when I came out of the Army towards the end of the First World War, and I was sent to prison for three months for daring to do so. It is a thing very dear to my heart to wish that the Army today should be humanised to the fullest possible extent. The old barbaric form of No. 1 field punishment has gone. At least, I believe that to be so.

Mr. Hare: If the hon. Gentleman will look at Section 73 of the Act, he will there find a very clear definition of what forms of field punishment are legal.

Mr. Simmons: Yes, I looked at that, but I found it rather ambiguous. I should like to have more detail about what this field punishment is. I will leave it there for the moment.
In Part III are the provisions relating to forfeiture of pay, and by Section 144 (1) it is provided that
No forfeiture of the pay of an officer, warrant officer, non-commissioned officer or


soldier of the regular forces shall be imposed unless authorised by this or some other Act, and no deduction from such pay shall be made unless so authorised or authorised by Royal Warrant.
May we be told what other Act is contemplated? Here again, there is a case for a footnote or an appendix so that those who have only this Act when dealing with these matters can make the necessary reference.
Next, I come to barrack damages, another "King Charles's head" of mine. I am opposed to collective punishment, and barrack damages, in my opinion, are neither more nor less than a big swindle, because nobody knows what the cost of the damage is, it is arbitrarily assessed, and arbitrarily filched from the pay of the soldier. Could not barrack damages be done away with altogether? Surely, if the discipline of the corps is so bad that damage is done to barracks or to equipment, the blame rests not upon the soldiers but upon the lack of discipline exercised by those who are supposed to command them. If barrack damages are to be imposed, let them be imposed upon those who fail to maintain discipline rather than upon those who break it.
I hope that more hon. Members will devote their attention to the detail of the Act. We are tonight setting a precedent for the future in these annual discussions, and I consider that our annual discussion on the Army Act should deal with the provisions of the Act itself as they affect the ordinary serving soldier. I come now to Section 197 (2), which provides that
Any person who purchases or takes in pawn any naval, military or air-force decoration awarded to any member of Her Majesty's military forces…shall be guilty of an offence against this section unless he proves that at the time of the alleged offence the person to whom the decoration was awarded was dead or had ceased to be a member of those forces.
I remember that at the end of the First World War there was a gentleman who became a Member of this House and who had a pawnbroking business. Not many months after the end of the war his place of business was full of soldiers' medals. They had been pawned. It is a sad commentary that soldiers have to pawn their medals, but if they want to pawn them why should they not be allowed to do so?
There was the case the other day of a grand old soldier who was a high-ranking officer in the Worcestershire

Regiment and who won the V.C. At the age of 83 he was appealing in the newspaper for £100 to pay his debts. A V.C. is intrinsically the least valuable of the medals the Army awards, but in sentiment and in real value it is the most valuable, if that old soldier wanted to pawn his V.C., why should not he have done so? It would have been a terrible wrench and would have broken his heart, but if he were facing penury, as he was, why should he be prevented from doing something to alleviate his distress? What is the reason for this Section in the Act? May we have an explanation?
I have never been before a court-martial, but I was very near to one once. I have no personal knowledge of them. I have no experience of the law, but I believe from what I have heard that the procedure has improved for the ordinary soldier.
I should like to say a word about the position of the conscientious objector. I have searched through the Act to find any reference to the conscientious objector. I remember that on Second Reading, when the Bill was introduced from the Front Bench, we were told that this would be dealt with administratively. Can the Minister give us some information about this? When he said that it would be dealt with administratively, he must have been referring to the Bill, but I cannot find any mention of it in the Act.
Technically, a conscientious objector is an enlisted man, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) knows. They enlist him and he is kept in a guard room. Technically, if we deal with enlisted men, then we also deal with conscientious objectors. I know that the conscientious objector is a nuisance to authority. That is what he intends to be, but the law is that he has the right to his conscientious objection and I hope that we can have some guidance from the Minister as to what Sections of the Act are applicable to the conscientious objector and how he will be dealt with under the Act.

Mr. Wigg: I know that the hon. Gentleman has sincere views about this matter. Perhaps I can help him. When the point was before the Select Committee we discussed what happened to the boy who joined the Army on a Regular


engagement and, whilst serving, developed conscientious objection. There was a move by hon. Members on this side of the House who thought on the same lines as my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) that there should be provision in the Act for such a man to go before a tribunal. When the Select Committee considered it, and when it was subsequently debated on the Floor of the House, it was ascertained that there had never been a case of a boy developing conscientious objection during his boy's service. The then Secretary of State for War, on behalf of the Government, gave an assurance that if, in the future, such a case should ever arise it would be dealt with administratively along the humane lines that my hon. Friend has suggested. No provision was made in the Act because no case had ever arisen.

Mr. Simmons: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that explanation. It still leaves the position that the ordinary conscientious objector I am not dealing with the man who has already enlisted as a Regular—is an enlisted man.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member. If this point is not in the Act, I do not see how he can pursue it very much further. I was not aware of this, but we have been told that it was not dealt with in the Act because there was an assurance that it would be dealt with administratively. If it is not in the Act I do not see how the hon. Member can say more than he has.

Mr. Simmons: But does not the administrative action stem from the Report of the Select Committee upon which the Act is founded? By giving an assurance in a debate that something would be done to deal with the question administratively, did not the Minister bring it within our debate? I realise that it is a difficult position. I suppose we could raise this matter when the Army Estimates are discussed, and I will leave it until then.
These annual debates upon the Army Act, 1955, are, in effect, a fairly good substitute for the old debates on the Army Annual Act. I am disappointed to see from the attendance that so few hon. Members are interested in the enlistment, recruitment, and terms of service and conditions of the men and women

in our Army and Air Force. I will not include the Navy, because the Navy has a more barbaric system. We owe our existence to the heroism and courage of the men who died in two world wars. It is a sad commentary upon our remembering them that when we discuss the conditions of service and the conditions of life of those who are their successors, so little interest is shown. I hope that in future annual debates on the Army Act hon. Members will take part in them in the interests of the serving Service men and women.

Mr. Wigg: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. During your absence from the Chair I made a submission to Mr. Deputy-Speaker, who said that you had instructed him that any matter falling under the broad provisions of A. and Q. were in order. It seems to me that that Ruling should be given further consideration. I respectfully submit to you that if all matters that come under the heading of A. and Q. are in order we shall find ourselves discussing supplies of ammunition, bridging material, married quarters and so on.
It was my understanding that you gave that Ruling in order to exclude General Staff matters or foreign affairs. My submission to Mr. Deputy-Speaker arose from the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) was discussing transfers, or, in short, the amalgamation of units. In my submission, transfers between corps or between arms of the Service are obviously discussable because they are governed by Section 3 (4) of the Act, which provides that
where a soldier of the regular forces is transferred in times of peace against his will it can be done only by the authority of the Army Council.
The amalgamation which my right hon. Friend had in mind was the amalgamation of infantry regiments inside the same corps. They were, therefore, outside the scope of the Act. I did not make this statement in any pedantic way and I certainly did not want to obstruct my right hon. Friend in any way. He continued with his speech. At the same time, it is very important that this point should be established, and I therefore winder whether you would be kind enough to give a Ruling either now, or perhaps at some later stage at your convenience.
A further submission which I wish to make is that another hon. Member discussed pay at some length. I did not interrupt him, but I submit to you that pay and the conditions of pay are dealt with by Royal Warrant, by the exercise of the Prerogative, and that, therefore, they are clearly out of order. Again, I have no wish to interfere with anyone's speech or to circumscribe the debate in any way, but it seems to me, for the reasons which I made clear when seeking your guidance earlier, that these points should be established.

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I ought to say something about it. I was not in the Chair when the Ruling to which the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) refers was given and I wish in no sense to criticise the Ruling given by Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because these matters depend very much on how the point is put and how it is linked with something which is relevant. I therefore express no criticism of what Mr. Deputy-Speaker said.
Perhaps I should make it clear for myself, however, that when in an earlier Ruling I used the term "A. and Q." I used it as meaning to exclude those matters which pertain to the General Staff, so that the discussion should keep within the terms of the Act. I can imagine that there are many matters, perhaps of Q. in particular, which are not comprised in the Act, but I prefaced what I said by pointing out that the discussion had to be relevant to the Act before us. I think that that should prevent any misunderstanding in the future.

6.42 p.m.

Brigadier O. L. Prior-Palmer: I shall make a very short speech tonight, because in my view the appropriate time to make a reasonably long speech on this subject is on the Army Estimates, when we can cover the ground fully and have the whole night at our disposal.
I want to refer only briefly to what was said by the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Fienburgh) when he replied to my right hon. Friend's opening speech. I do not think that in his own heart he believes—if he does he is not fit to be sitting on the Front Bench—that one of Her Majesty's

Governments, I do not care which complexion, would quite deliberately do nothing about recruiting because they knew perfectly well, or thought they knew, that they would lose the next Election and that in this way they could embarrass the new Government.
The hon. Member's remark was the sort which I should have expected to hear in a private school debate, not in the House of Commons. I do not think that the hon. Member does himself or these debates any good by making that sort of crack. We have had a reputation in Service debates in the House of talking constructively and positively and without party rancour, and I hope that we shall not hear that kind of remark again.
On the other hand, I could not agree more with the hon. Member about his comment on the way in which some officers carry out their duties. The situation is the same in every walk of life. We cannot expect every officer to be a first-class officer. There are some who may not be quite as intelligent as others and who may lack imagination. Because they are without imagination and not intelligent, they are in the type of job which is performed by the officer to whom the hon. Member referred. He is probably not competent to be anywhere else.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House want us to be very careful that we do nothing to reduce the standard of men who are coming forward to be officers. We want the very finest people we can get, and I very much regret to say that in these days the right type of leader is not coming forward for Her Majesty's commission. I have inside information about this which I will give in the Estimates debate, but I should not be allowed to talk very much longer about it now.
The topic about which I want to speak has dominated practically the whole debate—and quite rightly, because it is the burning topic of the moment. It is that of trying to get an adequate number of recruits to carry out the pledge which the Government gave to the House in the White Paper. I am in sympathy with and to a very large extent in agreement with the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg); as things are at the moment, I cannot see how we can do it in the time available. As my right hon. Friend the


Minister of Defence stated quite candidly at the time, there is the saving paragraph in the White Paper that if, by any chance, we did not succeed in getting enough recruits, there would have to be some form of conscription or, as I prefer to call it, National Service.
Hon. Members opposite have been screaming for year after year that there was only one way to end National Service, and that was by taking the plunge. They said that it was useless to try to work out schemes beforehand and to put the abolition of National Service off indefinitely. There was only one way to do it, they said, and that was to take the plunge and to see whether it could possibly be made to work; and, if not, we could have a saving clause that some form of selective service might eventually be necessary.
If I may be quite honest with my right hon. Friend, I am not very happy about the Committee which he mentioned. Here I am very much in sympathy with what hon. Members have said today. Heaven knows, we all know the answers, do we not? I think that the series of articles by Majdalany were excellent, but even he told us all the things that we already knew, or most of which we already knew. If its terms of reference are no wider than this, I do not believe that this Committee will produce anything which we did not know before.
Publicity is one aspect which is weak. There has been a prejudice against the Army ever since the days of Cromwell, but there has never been a prejudice against the Navy, which can always get all the recruits it wants. One of the reasons is that life in the Navy is very exciting and is the greatest fun. That is what attracts people as much as anything else. Much nonsense has been spoken about discipline being a deterrent. That is absolute rubbish. There could not be greater discipline than in the Marine Commandos, the Paratroops and the Brigade of Guards, and they have the highest recruiting figures in the Army.
What the young man wants is the promise of excitement and of something thrilling. That is why young men join the Paratroops and the Marine Commandos. The ordinary, dreary battalion training on the old basis in a line regiment is enough to put anybody off. We

need a little more imagination and a little more of the Boy Scout stuff, if hon. Members like; we need more rubbing stones together to make a fire—or is it sticks?
That is the basis, and we must give it all the publicity that we can. These men need outdoor excitement such as mountaineering, sailing and tough exercises. Those are the things which these men like, not the ordinary exercises on one of the plains of this country, with blank ammunition. Furthermore such training will not be a waste of time, because in eight cases out of ten that is precisely what they will be called upon to do in the police warfare, or the small wars, whatever we call it. In my view, it is extremely unlikely, provided that we keep our safeguards, that the deterrrent is still there, and that we are not frightened of telling the enemy of what the deterrent is, that there will be a major war, fought with major arms. These men have to be taught through a different kind of training, through exciting training—

Mr. Speaker: To prevent any misunderstanding, I ought to point out that I do not think that the prospect of a future war comes within the Act, and I hope that the debate will not diverge into these rather abstruse matters of foreign politics, and so on.

Brigadier Prior-Palmer: I am very sorry, Mr. Speaker, that I was a little carried away. I was trying to advocate a different system of training, but I will leave that for now.
What is entirely about recruiting is this other battle which I hope my right hon. Friend will continue to wage against the maintenance of the differential between the Civil Service and the fighting Services in such things as pay, allowances and amenities. It is a battle which has been going on for years. It is the root of half the evil of the difficulty of recruiting for the Army that whenever soldiers get a rise in pay there is a comparable rise among the civil servants. It is because of that that the Treasury refuses suggestions for rises in pay or allowances or for improvement in amenities in the fighting Services. That differential has to be broken down if we are to get recruits.
There is no comparison whatever between a man who is prepared to leave


his home and to be sent to any part of the world at a moment's notice and to be messed about—incommoded—and a fellow who locks his office every day at a specific time and goes to his own home and his own family. It is monstrous to compare them. We shall not get recruits unless this differential is broken down.
One part, in particular, of this battle that I hope my right hon. Friend will succeed in winning very soon is the provision of assistance to soldiers in educating their children. One of the greatest difficulties in recruiting lies in the problem of the education of the soldiers' children. We have won half this part of the battle by getting this provision given to troops overseas. Now the other half must be won if we are to get recruits. We must extend that provision to the soldiers at home.
A little publicity on the amount of leave a soldier has would do much to help recruiting. It is not just the fortnight's leave that an ordinary civilian gets, and I believe that, were it much more widely kown, the amount of leave a soldier has would in itself be an incentive to recruiting.

6.52 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons), I am greatly surprised that so few hon. Members have come to discuss the problems arising in this debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), for example, has referred to the effect on Army discipline of the action of the War Office in merging the Highland Light Infantry and the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In view of the great publicity which was given to this controversy in the early part of this year, I should have thought that the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Mr. Walter Elliot), who led a deputation to the Prime Minister about it, and the hon. Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore), who took a prominent part in the campaign of criticism in that controversy, would have been present tonight to put their criticisms on the Floor of the House against the Government.
During that controversy I suggested that if the hon. and gallant Members who were critical of the Government put down a Motion of censure of the

Government for their action in merging those two regiments it would be an appropriate Parliamentary way of attracting attention to the matter. I said, moreover, that if the occasion arose to press such a Motion of censure upon the Government for merging those two regiments I should have, reluctantly, to support the Government. However, after all that hullabaloo about the tremendous disaster would would occur if the Highland Light Infantry were merged with the Royal Scots Fusiliers those hon. and gallant Members are not here. They are—

Mr. H. Hynd: Absentees.

Mr. Hughes: —deserters, and I am the only one of those disputants who has attended the debate in order to discuss the special problems of the Highland Light Infantry and of the regiment which is recruited in my constituency.
I must say, much as the War Office may regret it, that I am on the side of the War Office, and I wish to dissociate myself from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, who blew his trumpet and then deserted the battlefield, because he seemed to argue that the discipline of the Army, as affected by the Act before us, has been affected also by this controversy in Scotland.
I represent the area in which the Royal Scots Fusiliers are recruited. I take a great deal of interest in the public problems which arise in my constituency, and when I received a green card from a general who wished to lobby me about the fate of my regiment—although I thought he was optimistic in lobbying me—I listened very carefully to the argument of how the morale of the Army would be affected if the H.L.I. were merged with the R.S.F. In spite of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said about this having an effect on recruiting for the Army, I wish to give my personal testimony that during the whole of this controversy affecting Ayrshire I did not receive one communication at all from Ayrshire. The only person who made any representation at all to me was that optimistic general who wrote to me from Windsor Castle. So I suggest that my right hon. Friend's argument that the War Office did something to damage recruiting and to demoralise the Army in West Scotland is absolutely without foundation.
The Secretary of State for War, or the Under-Secretary of State, will remember that I wished to find out what were the facts and during the summer I put to them a written Question about the number of soldiers who were being recruited into these two Scottish regiments. The figures show that in the whole of Scotland there were not sufficient recruits for all the different regiments to form one decent regiment. I do not wish to burden the House with a recital of the figures for the different Scottish regiments. However, to show that my part of the country was not more backward than others, I will say that in the first nine months of this year the total number recruited to the Royal Scotch Fusiliers—

Mr. H. Hynd: Scots Fusiliers.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: —was 59. I will give figures for the last three months for which figures were available. I was told by the War Office that the number of recruits attracted into the Royal Scotch Fusiliers—

Mr. H. Hynd: Scots.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Yes, but it does not make any difference to the number of recruits whether I say they are Scots, Scotch or Scottish Fusiliers.
The number who joined in the three months ending October was 19.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw talked about huge demonstrations and a great display of public feeling in Glasgow for the Highland Light Infantry. He seemed to indicate that the War Office was at fault. But the figure, for the three months ending October, of the number of people who joined the Highland Light Infantry, even after these enormous sentimental demonstrations, was only 15 out of the population of the City of Glasgow, which I believe is fewer than the number of hon. Members who are taking an interest in the future of the Army at the present moment. That puts the matter in perspective.
If only 15 young recruits joined the Army from Glasgow, the second city of the Empire with a population of about one million, and only 19 joined from the normally pugnacious population of Ayrshire, there is something to be said from the point of view of the War Office for merging the two. Even if the and the R.S.F. were merged, according to the

present rate of recruitment based on this three-month figure they would not have a sufficient number of recruits to fill a decent bus, let alone a regiment.

Mr. H. Hynd: Is it not possible that the reason for the small number of recruits is that, under the reorganisation, they would not be allowed to wear the kilt?

Mr. Hughes: The hon. Member has a point there, but he will find that the number of recruits into those regiments which are allowed to wear the kilt was even fewer. I do not think that the wearing of the kilt makes the slightest difference. My hon. Friend may think that putting the whole of the British Army in kilts will bring recruits, but I do not believe that the Secretary of State for War can solve his problem in that way.
I have every sympathy with the War Office because I believe that it is trying to face a very difficult problem to which there is no answer. The young recruits are not joining the Army today because the young men whom the Minister wishes to attract are simply realising that there are better opportunities in industry.
Hon. and gallant Members on the Front Bench opposite have done their level best to attract recruits into the Army and they have failed. If there were a transposition of Front Benches and the Opposition became the Government tomorrow it would have the same problem to face, and I am quite sure that the results would be the same. I do not believe that spokesmen on the Opposition Front Bench have any ready-made solution to the problem of attracting recruits into the British Army. There is no such solution. It is no use the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior-Palmer) advising the Government to spend more on publicity. They are already spending a considerable sum. In order to attract recruits into the Army the Government have spent £50,000 in Scotland alone in the first nine months of this year.

Mr. Speaker: This argument would be more appropriate on Supply. There is nothing about publicity in the Act. There are certain provisions in it about recruitment, and the hon. Member ought to relate what he has to say to those provisions.

Mr. Hughes: I apologise, Mr. Speaker, but I think that in your absence from the Chair every speaker has been dealing with the recruiting problem. If I have erred, I apologise, but I have only been following the lines of the debate. I will merely add that I should like to know how much the £50,000 spent on publicity in Scotland worked out per recruit.
The argument has been advanced in the debate that if the recruits are not obtained the Government will have to resort to conscription and the continuation of National Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) suggested, as he has suggested before, that there should be some kind of coalition between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party in order to continue conscription when the recruiting campaigns break down. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley in some things, but I regard this as a rather sinister suggestion because I do not believe that the people of this country want a continuation of National Service. I believe that any attempt by the two Front Benches to co-operate in order to enforce National Service would be bitterly resented.
I do not know whether I am in order when I refer to the point made by one hon. Member about the committee formed to assist the Government in recruiting, a committee on which the editor of the Daily Mirror will be a distinguished member, but I do not think that this committee will solve the problem because I do not believe that publicity is the answer. In an age of full employment, when the Government do not know what soldiers and the Army are for, and when decent opportunities are provided in civil life for ordinary men and women to obtain useful and intelligent occupation, I do not believe that we shall have recruits for the Army. I believe that we shall have to adapt our military and foreign policies to that plain, unmistakable fact.

7.7 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: I should like to add my words to those words of regret already spoken about the absence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey). It is some time since I ventured to address remarks to the House on Army matters

and, indeed, I do not think that I should be doing so today were it not for my right hon. Friend's absence.
This debate was introduced by a genial speech by the Secretary of State for War, a speech to the subject matter of which nobody since has paid any attention at all. We moved off briskly, under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Fienburgh), to discuss what was really the main issue in our minds—the question of recruiting and its relation to future national policy about National Service. I do not propose to detain the House very long, because the Under-Secretary of State for War, who is to follow me has quite a large assignment. He has to answer the points made about this main issue and the numerous points of detail about the Act which have been made in the debate, notably by my hon. Friend the Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons).
What I have to say will be concerned mainly with this main issue, and on this matter it is well to remember that the Government are bound to the statement in the Defence White Paper in which they say that they are planning on a basis that there will be no further call-up under the National Service Acts after the end of 1960. Nothing that has been said by Ministers, either before or since the publication of that White Paper, has in any way weakened the validity of the commitments into which they entered there. Indeed, the remarks made on television a little time ago by the Minister of Defence if anything strengthened and deepened the nature of the Government's commitment to see that there is no further call-up under the National Service Acts after the end of 1960.
It is clear that a commitment of that kind makes a great demand on the Government and the nation in the field of Regular recruiting. The Government are committed. The nation as a whole, in a sense, is committed to the view that it is possible, by Regular recruiting, to obtain a sufficient number of people to enable this policy to be carried out. The Government have fixed the end of 1960, which would mean that by the end of 1962 there would be no more National Service men in the Army. That is roughly a period of five years from the time that the Government made the announcement.
We on this side of the House suggested a period of four years, but I do not think that the difference is sufficiently large to be worth much argument. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) said that it could not be done in four years or anything like it, but that it is a ten-year job. The point that I want to make is that, whatever view we take on this question of how long it takes from the moment we resolve to get rid of National Service to the time when the last National Service man is out of the Army—whether it is four, five or ten years—what matters is the starting point.
We are no further in starting on this problem now than we were last April. When we on this side of the House suggested that the job could be clone probably in a period of four years, we were assuming that we started it at once, and vigorously, with an announcement of the major positive measures it was proposed to take to stimulate recruiting. On most of the major issues that have to be settled if recruiting is to be stimulated, we are no further forward than we were when the Government issued the Defence White Paper last April. That is why I say that, even more important than the question, "How long will the job take?", is the question "When are the Government going to start?"
What are some of the decisions which have to be taken if one wants to stimulate recruiting to the point where it will be possible to dispense with conscription? I think that there is by now, not only in the House but in the country at large, fairly general agreement on the answer to that question. The factors which are mentioned over and over again in the argument are: pay, accommodation, nature of Army discipline—and I hope to comment on the interesting remarks made on that point by the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Brigadier Prior Palmer)—the possibilities of a reasonable family life for the Service man, his opportunities for promotion and his position when he returns to civilian life.
I think that everyone is agreed that those are the major matters which help to determine whether a man will join the Army or whether, having joined it, he will stay in it for any considerable period of time. The question I am obliged to ask is, "Can the Committee of very eminent persons, whom the Gov-

ernment have appointed, really tell us any more about any of these factors than we know already?" There is already room for argument on the comparative importance of those various factors, but I doubt very much whether argument of that kind, which after all is a matter of judgment and opinion, will ever be resolved by the report of a Committee, however eminent. We are still not at all clear—perhaps the Under-Secretary will be able to help us on this—what is expected from the report of this Committee. In what way will it enlarge knowledge and in what way will it make it easier, after six precious months have gone by and its Report is issued, for the Government to get the necessary recruits?
I would say a word on the various factors which I have mentioned. On the question of pay there is one point which we want to get cleared up. We understand that there is to apply to a number of Government Departments what some people have called the Thorneycroft formula, that if we pay more to the individual Government employee we must keep the total amount of money we spend at the same level by some other kind of economy, possibly by employing fewer persons.
Does that principle apply to the Service Departments or not? If it does, it puts them in a very odd position. Presumably, if they are to pay more to their employees it is for the purpose of getting more employees, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells them that the condition of paying more is that they must have fewer employees, the whole object of the exercise is defeated. We want to know where exactly this wrangle between the Chancellor and the Service Departments stands at the present time. I do not propose to pursue the question of exactly how important pay is in comparison with the other factors. I am myself fairly sure that it is a major factor in getting people to join in the first place.
On accommodation, it ought really to be possible, with the diminishing total number of people in the Army, to make very considerable improvements. I remember that during my own years at the War Office the number of men that we had to maintain under arms made it extremely difficult to accommodate all of them, let alone accommodate them in reasonable quarters. The Government


have now a much more manageable problem on their hands. I hope that we shall not have, as there used to be some years ago, ridicule of any attempt to make the quarters in which soldiers live more agreeable. There is no reason at all why a man who has to put up with all the other very serious drawbacks in a military life should be required to live in accommodation which is not up to the civilised standard which people normally expect in this country.
On the question of discipline, I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing that it would be quite absurd to suggest that we are more likely to get people into the Army by suggesting that there would not be any discipline in it. There is a point, however, to which, I am sure, more attention ought to be given. There will be an increasing demand from the kind of men we want in the Army that the discipline to which they are subjected shall be a discipline that makes sense.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North, speaking first in the debate from this side of the House, quoted one instance of men being badgered about over something that was of trivial importance. Contrast that with something which we read in the Press a little while ago when, apparently, in one unit, for two or three weeks before men were due to go out of the Army, because their departure from the Army was approaching, no one worried particularly about what hour they got up in the morning. That is an error in the reverse direction—failure to bother about something that is important. It is vital to see that discipline is strict on matters that are important and not to waste time and energy on badgering men to do things which may have had some importance or connection with morale half a century ago but which really have no relation to the way in which people think and behave at the present day.
The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing spoke of the need for excitement in Army life and instanced a kind of "Outward Bound" training. I think that that might well have its appeal for the very young man. I am not so sure that it is as relevant to the man of 30, the skilled engineer or skilled craftsman in some other field, who is making up his mind whether to continue in the Army

or not. I doubt whether that kind of approach is so appropriate to him. I think that what he is concerned with is, "Does my life in the Army give me a reasonable opportunity to use the skill I have and which in civilian life certainly would be used to the full?" Different things appeal, of course, to soldiers of different ages. The common factor is whether it appears to him that what he is doing makes sense. In view of the general increase in the level of public education and general knowledge, that question is asked far more emphatically and more shrewdly today than it was fifty years ago.
I had prepared, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in case there should be rather rigid Rulings from the Chair as to what was and what was not in order, a sheet of paper with numbered Sections of the Army Act, on which pegs I could hang all the points I wished to raise. There is a Section about maintenance orders on which I proposed, if necessary, to hang a reference to family life in the Army. However, that degree of ingenuity, owing to the kindness of the Chair, has not been required.
There again, with decreasing numbers it ought to be possible completely to dispose of the problem of married quarters, and to give to the soldier almost as much assurance of united family life as the civilian enjoys. Of course, I include in united family life the question of proper provision for the education of children. We have made some progress on that matter, but I am sure that something further could be done.
I will mention also promotion. It is an essential part of the scheme of our Army that there are two promotion ladders and that, broadly speaking, one group of men move up from private or craftsman to N.C.O. and to warrant officer, and that another group of men enter the Army and become, at quite a youthful age, commissioned officers. There is also some provision for men who have gone up the first ladder to move on to the second in certain circumstances. I wonder whether that provision is adequate? Ought we to consider being able to offer the men who join the Army in the ranks extended opportunity for promotion, such as there is in many other professions, possibly right to the top?
I am not suggesting that we should eliminate completely the two-ladder


system. If we wanted to argue that, it would be a much larger question, and I do not know the answer. I assume that we should keep our present set-up in the main, but I think that opportunities for a man to work up through non-commissioned and warrant ranks to commissioned rank might be expanded with advantage.
Then there is the question of return to civilian life. It is a hard thing for a man, having taken up a profession which, even if he serves in it as long as any man, he will still leave when in the prime of life, if he has to go out with very little certainty of what is to be his occupation or even where he is to live. Will not the Secretary of State get at his colleague the Minister of Housing and Local Government again about this matter? That Ministry issued a circular to local authorities on the question of the housing of ex-Regular members of the forces. That circular was of no effect whatsoever. It was in the nature of the case that it should not be effective because it was nothing more than a pious exhortation.
It should not be too difficult a problem because, after all, the numbers are very small compared with the total numbers of persons on housing registers throughout the country. If we are told that public opinion will not tolerate some degree of preference for ex-Regulars, then we must ask the nation what they do want in the way of an Army. Will they say. "We will not have National Service and we will not help in any way to make the life of the Regular soldier attractive"?
If we can get the right answers to these questions, we shall then have to convince the potential recruits that we have got the right answers. I do not know how long it is since the War Office overhauled its machinery for recruiting. When did it last consider where the recruiting offices are sited; what methods are used to attract men; and how its efforts are related to those of the other Services? It is some time ago, and I do not charge it against this Government, that I passed by a large hoarding with many advertisements on it. At one end was an advertisement saying. "Join the Regular Army" and giving the reasons for doing so, while at the other end was a large poster saying, "You will do better in the Navy".

Mr. Emrys Hughes: I saw a hoarding recently on one side of which was a recruiting poster which read, "Join the Army", and on the other side, I read, "Trust the Lord Jesus Christ and he saved".

Mr. Stewart: Yes, but I do not think we can blame that on the Government.
In conclusion, the constitutional purpose of this debate is to give the executive, the Government, the opportunity to justify before the legislature their claim to be allowed to have a standing Army. The original atmosphere in which the predecessor of this procedure was created was one in which the Government would be inclined to say, "We need an Army for the defence of the country", and the legislature would be inclined to say, "Yes, but how do we know that you will not use an Army in order to deprive the country of its liberties and use it as an instrument of tyranny?"
It is the job of the Government to show that an Army is necessary to defend the country. Incidentally, if I may say so with respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, this was why I was a little puzzled by Mr. Speaker's Ruling, that it would not be in order to discuss the possibility of a future war in this debate. I say that because, historically, if there had never been any fear of a war, Parliament would never have been persuaded that there was any need for an Army. That is the reason why we call the Army Office the War Office, because nobody supposed that an Army was wanted unless there was the fear of war.
Today we do not seriously suspect that the Government will use the Army to deprive the country of its liberties. We may think that the Government are proposing to do that by other means—by deception, by propaganda, by the ringing of bells and so on—but we do not expect them to do it by the actual use of the Army; so the modern form of the argument is that the Government have to show that the Army is necessary for the defence of the country. The legislature has to ask, "Are you sure that you are not merely keeping on an Army out of habit or for prestige, or because you have not been able to think of the proper modern form of our defences?"
The task of the Government, therefore, is to show that the Army makes sense from the nation's point of view, and from the point of view of the young men whom they hope will serve in it.

7.28 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Julian Amery): I would like, at the outset, to say that I share the regret of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) at the absence from our debate of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey). I am sure, however, that when the right hon. Gentleman reads his hon. Friend's speech in HANSARD, he will feel that his party's view has been put admirably, if I may say so without presumption.
The greater part of our debate has been devoted to recruiting, and it is on that subject that I shall make most of my remarks. But, as the hon. Gentleman has reminded us, this occasion has a significance beyond the immediate and burning problems which we have been discussing, for it has raised in a new form the principle—fundamental in our constitutional theory—of Parliamentary control of the Armed Forces.
I think that Macaulay held the view that the question of who should control the Army was the one issue between the Crown and Parliament which could not be resolved. Certainly, if we look at other countries we find there is little doubt that where the Armed Forces have not been ultimately controlled by the elected representatives of the people, their free institutions have had a very short run.
The first question, therefore, which we must ask is this: has the new Act adequately and fully safeguarded the principle of Parliamentary control? I think that we can say without hesitation that there has been no gag on the width of this debate. Indeed, a number of hon. Members have suggested that, if anything, it has gone too wide.
There remains the question of future procedure for amending the Act, if amendment should prove necessary. The hon. Member for Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) asked about that procedure. As my right hon. Friend made clear, the Government have undertaken that a Select Committee will be set up when the five-year period has elapsed. This Committee

will consider the form of the new Act which will supersede this one. Presumably, in the discussion of that new Measure, there will also be opportunities for hon. Members to put forward Amendments.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head), when Secretary of State for War, explained the difficulty of one Parliament trying to bind another. That is why we cannot write provisions into the Bill setting up the Select Committee and making specific provision for the future.

Mr. Simmons: if one Parliament cannot commit another, neither can the Government commit their successors, so what is the point of saying that a Select Committee will be set up in five years?

Mr. Amery: It is a question of good will between both sides of the House. I have no doubt that the procedure will prove to be adequate. The hon. Member for Brierley Hill spoke about the need for Amendments in future. In fact a new Act will emerge. So it will be a question not so much of inserting Amendments as of producing an entirely different Act, although the greater part of it will be on very much the same lines as the present one.
The purpose of the Act—the hon. Member for Fulham referred to this matter—is to enlist and maintain an Army, that is to say, a disciplined body of men trained to fight on land, The Act sets out the contract defining the rights and duties of the soldier in so far as they differ from the general law.
With the exception of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) it is generally accepted that we need to have land forces. I know that the hon. Member doubts it. I can only say to him what King William III said a long time ago, in 1697:
The circumstances of our affairs abroad are such that I think myself obliged to tell you…that England cannot be safe without a land force; and I hope we shall not give those that mean us ill the opportunity of effecting under the notion of a peace that which they could not bring to pass by a war.
That is a fairly sound proposition today.
The question we now have to answer is how far the instrument is sound. I shall consider it under its main heads, dealing first, with enlistment and terms of service, and so with the main issue of recruiting.
The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Fienburgh) and the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) took my right hon. Friend to task for having emphasised the historical perspective of the debate and for not having said more about recruitment and other immediate problems of the Army. From what they said, I suggest that their memories are short and I remind them that it is less than a month since, in winding up the defence debate, my right hon. Friend dealt in very great detail with the problems which are confronting the Army today, problems which remain with us, but which have not changed so very much in the four weeks which have elapsed since that debate.
The hon. Member for Islington, North expressed himself in very pessimistic and almost violent terms about what he called the appalling delay and dither in the way we were setting about our task. He and the hon. Member for Fulham and others who have echoed that criticism forget the immense job which the Government undertook in the course of the summer—the working out of detailed plans for reducing the Armed Forces to about 50 per cent. of their present strength while meeting our commitments at the same time, the reorganisation of the British infantry, the provision for redundant officers and N.C.O.s, the whole question of civilian establishments. This has been a huge task which has been tackled with what the public at large has regarded as a great measure of success. It is very difficult against that immediate background of reductions to make a dramatic advance in positive recruitment, but I have no doubt that the groundwork has been well and truly done.
The recruiting figures are not as grim as the hon. Member for Fulham and the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) suggested. It is very difficult to make a comparison, because the six-year engagement was introduced only just over two months ago. We have only just got the figures for October and it is not easy to assess their exact significance. They inevitably contain a certain hangover from men enlisted in September, and, in any case, October is traditionally a bad month for recruitment.
Nevertheless, comparing like with like, the figures for long-service Regular

recruits for October, 1957, are an improvement upon those of October, 1956.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does that apply to Scotland?

Mr. Amery: I do not have the breakdown geographically.
There was an improvement in October, 1957, over October, 1956, in terms of long-service Regulars, by which I mean six-year men and nine-year men. I suppose that to bring October, 1956, into line with October, 1957, we must take into account about 10 per cent. of the three-year men. If anything, my impression is that the figures since then have been improving slightly, but I cannot give any details to the House, so I do not want to make too much of the point.

Mr. Wigg: The numbers recruited in October give 4,000 man-years less than in September. I am merely seeking information. Will the hon. Gentleman tell me by what process he arrives at the conclusion that the figures for October are better than those for. September?

Mr. Amery: The hon. Member has not exactly followed what I said. I was referring to long-service Regulars.

Mr. Wigg: I entirely agree. I am giving the hon. Member the benefit of the three-year engagement, but he cannot have it both ways. I have carefully allowed him to have the 1957 figures for three-year engagements and he will have some of those left. On his own basis, he has at least 80.

Mr. Amery: Perhaps the hon. Member would like to do the sum. In October, 1957, there were 489 six-year men and 156 nine-year men. In October, 1956, there were 105 six-year men and 193 nine-year men. One also has to make some allowance, to bring the figures into line, for the three-year men who might be disguised long-term men. Even so, that does not bring the total for long service for 1956 up to the total for 1957. If the hon. Member would like to consider the matter in greater detail, perhaps we could discuss it later.
The overall picture is not one which allows us any possible grounds for complacency. But it is not as grim as saying we will not get an Army of more than 70,000 men. In loose terms, our estimate


is that, even on present levels of recruitment, we should get substantially more than 100,000. Of course, the longer the upward thrust is delayed the higher and quicker it will have to go to reach the target in time.
The Government are not complacent about the recruitment problem. We are determined to make every effort to secure an all-Regular Army of 165,000. We believe that the job can be done. But, equally, we have made it perfectly plain that if we fail, paragraph 48 of the White Paper will come into effect. That makes the position unmistakably clear.

Mr. M. Stewart: Can the hon. Member say whether, on present evidence, he sees any reason to modify what the Government said in the Defence White Paper?

Mr. Amery: It is far too early for me to try to look into the crystal and say exactly what will happen. I do say that we are not complacent. We shall make every effort, and we believe that the job can be done.
The question is: how do we improve the position, which, as I say, is not satisfactory at present? There are two sides to a recruiting drive. There is, first, organisation, which includes propaganda and, second, the actual positive inducements which can be put before the potential recruit. I want to say a word about the organisation which exists at the moment. This may be useful as background information for future thinking.
The staff which undertakes the recruiting consists at present of 107 officers and 274 non-commissioned officers. Some of these are retired officers and others active, and the same is true of the N.C.O.s. We are having a considerable overhaul of the recruiting organisation. Active consideration is being given to new offices, to a new look to existing offices, and to instituting mobile offices. In each command we have two officers who serve in what we call the advisory service to youth. They receive excellent co-operation from youth employment offices, from most directors of education and from many education authorities. I think that the success of their work is borne out by the very good figures for boys' recruitment. We have also for some time

past had mobile exhibition trailers which exhibit the merits of different corps in rural areas, and our plan is to extend this service in the future.
In each command we have appointed expert consultants in exhibitions, office window displays, and so on, while recruiting officers and N.C.O.s are given salesmanship courses. This year, four new films showing the merits of the Army have been produced, and we have also organised visits to Army boys' schools by headmasters, local education authorities and boys themselves. This does not by any means exhaust the list of items of action on the organisational side. But it may give the House some idea of what is being done, and may dissipate some of the criticisms that the War Office does nothing to meet this problem.
But the great question remains—the problem of inducements, upon which most of the debate has turned. There are, first, the material inducements. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence announced improvements in the ration scales earlier this year, and the House will no doubt have seen from the newspapers the improvements in quality which we are trying to bring about. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend announced the correction of certain anomalies, which marks the first step in securing more justice for the soldier.
The whole problem of pay and allowances has been discussed at some length by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Islington, North tried to draw me upon the subject by suggesting different hypothetical courses which might be considered by the Government at the moment. I would only say to him now
Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.
I cannot be drawn into anticipating what will be considered reasonable by the Government on this point.
On the subject of accommodation my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has always given the highest priority to improving the accommodation of the soldier. I think that the House knows the position with regard to married quarters. Over 11,000 have been built since the war and over 2,000 modernised. During the last twelve months 876 have been built. There are 62,000 families


who are entitled to married quarters, but about 14,000 of those are still without them. The hon. Member for Fulham suggested that with the run-down of the Army we should be able to ease the married quarters situation to some extent. I do not know how far this will be so, because married quarters are almost exclusively occupied by the Regular part of the Army. So the run-down, which mostly bears upon the conscript element, will not ease the position all that much. The question of dress and uniform is also under consideration, as the House knows.
Just as important as the material inducements are what might be called the psychological or moral inducements, the interest in adventure, whether it be with technical weapons or through travel abroad, and the question of ambition, to which both the hon. Member for Islington, North and the hon. Member for Fulham referred. They dwelt upon the subject of promotion from the other ranks. The Regular Commissions Board already singles out almost every able young man who goes into the Army as another rank, catches him young and gets him transferred to the officer net.
I think that hon. Members have underestimated the importance of idealism in this matter. When they take on a job, young men, particularly at that age, think a good deal, not only of material inducements and attractive considerations, but, also, whether the job is worthwhile.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: That is why the Army is not an inducement.

Mr. Amery: I am not at all sure that this idealism will not be one of the inducements that will make them join. It is a very striking thing that in periods of danger, like Munich and Korea, young men flocked into the Army. Hon. Members who hold a different opinion in these matters should be careful not to pour scorn on the loyalties which make young men join up.

Mr. George Craddock: The hon. Member has touched upon the question of pay. Cannot he give us a specific statement? How can we reasonably expect young men to engage for a long period of years for 30s. or 35s. a week? I do not think that any hon. Member would do that. How, therefore, can we expect these young people to do

so? If we declared that it was our intention to treat these young men as skilled workers in industry we should probably have more people rallying round to join the Army, but they will not join for 30s. or 35s. a week.

Mr. Amery: If the hon. Member has been carefully following the evolution of the Army reorganisation over the last few months he will have seen that the Minister of Defence has upon more than one occasion—yesterday was the latest—announced that the whole question of pay is under review. The hon. Member will, therefore, appreciate that it would be wrong for me to try to anticipate what the conclusion of that review will be.
It is very difficult to assess the relative importance of these different factors to each other. Our hope is that the Committee under Sir James Grigg will help to define the order of priorities. Meanwhile, the War Office is making a good deal of research into the matter. The hon. Member for Islington, North said that we could get more information by going round the units. That is exactly what we do. We do not just sit in the office. The War Office has been conducting public opinion polls for some time, both directly, among serving soldiers, and indirectly, among young civilians, their parents, girl friends and their school masters, who know something about them.
Some of the most modern techniques of public opinion survey are being used, as they have been used before, in 1954 in Germany, in connection with the three-year engagement. On the whole, the information which has been elicited has proved remarkably accurate.

Mr. Bellenger: Why not tell us what the result is?

Mr. Amery: The investigations have not yet been concluded. The right hon. Member asks why I cannot give the results. I can only give him an interim report upon what we have done. I trust that we shall be able to say rather more when the Army Estimates are debated.

Mr. Wigg: I have now done the sum that the Minister set me. I hope he is satisfied with the result, because if he bases his Army on the recruiting figures published today, which he finds so satisfactory—and this month will


certainly be better than the succeeding months—he will have an Army of 52,000 when National Service ends, to which can be added the bonus of 12,000 men under the three-year engagement, so he will have an Army of 64,000. I hope that he will be satisfied with it.

Mr. Amery: I would ask the hon. Member not to say that I find the figures most satisfactory. On several occasions I have said that I do not—but I do not find them quite as unsatisfactory as he does. I do not agree with the conclusion which the hon. Member has drawn.
The hon. Member for Brierley Hill referred to conscientious objectors. The question of boys who develop conscientious objection scruples after enlistment in boys' units was dealt with on my behalf by the hon. Member for Dudley. Soldiers who develop conscientious objection scruples after enlistment in the ordinary way have the right to go before a tribunal under an Army Council Instruction. The great majority of conscientious objectors never come to the Army. Their cases are dealt with by the Ministry of Labour and National Service.
The hon. Member asked about transferring from corps to corps. This can be done with the approval of the Army Council, and is done only on grounds of real necessity. Conditions of service may be changed, but there is no question of a longer term of service being imposed.

Mr. Simmons: Can that be done by an Order which would come before the House?

Mr. Amery: I do not think that it comes to this House, but the matter is subject to the ordinary procedure at Question Time.
The hon. Member for Brierley Hill asked whether soldiers had the right to affirm instead of swearing an oath. Section 225 (1) safeguards that matter and will, I am sure, give him satisfaction. He raised some objection to the phrase, "officer and gentleman" and thought that it revealed class-consciousness. I think it does not. It is the fact that "officer" and "gentleman" are written in separately, suggesting that an officer is not necessarily a gentleman. I think it was in a scene from an Oscar Wilde play that

the butler announces, "Sir, there is an officer and a gentleman downstairs." The master of the house replied, "Show them both in."

Mr. Simmons: I do not think that that passes muster. "Officer and gentleman" mean one and the same person in the Section to which I was referring and I do not know why we cannot say "soldier and gentleman" as well.

Mr. Amery: All that is meant by what is said in the Act—as I think the hon. Member will agree upon reflection—is that if an officer is entrusted with the responsibility of authority over men, he must not only be technically qualified, but have the qualities of a gentleman as well. The hon. Member also referred to No. 1 field punishment. There is nothing ambiguous about paragraph 73, as he will find if he reads it carefully, and he need have no fear that any of the punishments to which he referred can be imposed under the present Act.
The hon. Member for Islington, North told us that he thought the "credit side" of the Act, the good side, was outweighed by unfortunate incidents to which reference was made in the Press from time to time. He talked a lot about "bull". The Army Act is a code of discipline, that is to say, it lists certain "do's" and "dont's". But no code can cover everything and a great deal of discretion must, in the nature of things, be left to commanding officers, officers and non-commissioned officers. Through the years the majority of these officers and N.C.O.s have been shown to be thoroughly responsible individuals.
We all agree about the importance of smartness and the maintenance of high standards. But we in the War Office recognise as well as anybody else that sometimes this can be carried to excess. How, then, do we use our influence and authority to prevent "bull"? An Army Council letter, written on 17th February, 1956, gives guidance to units on this subject. The key of the matter is really man management and it may be of some reassurance to the House to know that at Sandhurst twice as many periods on man management are given to officer cadets as before, and similar courses have been introduced for N.C.O.s.
Since this was done the number of complaints about "bull" have dropped. We are always on the watch, however, and there are a good many safeguards. There is the supervision of the War Office, the good sense of officers and N.C.O.s, public opinion and, though I do not wish to add to my already fairly large correspondence, there is always the possibility of intervention by hon. Members of this House.
Referring to Section 44 (1), the hon. Member for Brierley Hill asked what was intended by the words "or other Act". This refers to the Income Tax Act, 1943, the National Insurance Act, 1946, and the Bankruptcy Act, 1914.
By and large, it will be found that our provisions have been sound, and steps taken to make them known have received the commendation of the hon. Member for Dudley. The manual of Military Law, Part II, is being drafted on very much the lines suggested by the hon. Member. The assistance of three Oxford professors has been obtained to write the chapters on the history of military law and the history of the forces.
If it is felt in some quarters that there is too much emphasis on Oxford I can only refer to the advice given in Baedeker to the visitor to this country to be sure to visit the amenities of Oxford and Cambridge and then, in brackets, "If pressed for time, omit Cambridge."

The Army is part of a living community and, clearly, the Army and the community must march in step. I suppose that one of the most valuable contributions made by Lord Haldane and, later, by Lord Hore-Belisha was to bring the Army more in line with the civil customs of the day. The pressure for a Select Committee was generated by the fact that we had a citizen Army, and the House felt it important because of that to bring the customs and law of the Army in line with civil practice. I think it all the more necessary as we move towards an all-Regular Army, because the claims of justice are, to some extent, reinforced by expediency. All have to be persuaded if the power of compulsion is abandoned.
I believe that this Act is in line with the general customs of our national life and is, therefore, on a good foundation. But the law is not everything and the greater part of our work must depend on its application. Debates such as this will make for improvements in the application and, if need be, prepare the way for amendment. We therefore ask the House to approve the Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Draft Army Act, 1955 (Continuation) Order, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — AIR FORCE ACT (CONTINUATION)

7.59 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Charles Orr-Ewing): I beg to move,
That the Draft Air Force Act, 1955 (Continuation) Order, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I wish to call your attention to the fact that 40 Members are not present.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Gordon Touche): We cannot have a Count at this time. It is not the time for a Count. It is between 7.30 and 8.30.

Mr. Orr-Ewing: The House will be glad to know that my introductory speech will be short, partly because I am not clear even at this stage exactly what it is in order for me to say, and partly because the Air Force Act is modelled very closely on the Army Act and we have spent nearly five hours in debating that Act thoroughly. Therefore, I will just summarise the position.
As the House knows, the Air Force Act, 1955, came into force on 1st January, 1957. It expires at the end of this year unless continued under Section 224 of the Act. This Section lays down that Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, provide that the Act shall remain in force for a further twelve months. The draft Order in Council has to be laid before Parliament and to be approved by an Affirmative Resolution of each House.
We are now concerned with the first draft Order in Council, the Draft Air Force Act. 1955 (Continuation) Order in Council, 1957, arising under the Act. Its purpose is to continue the Act in operation up to the end of 1958. I do not think that any hon. Member will say that it is controversial.
The Select Committee which reviewed the old Army and Air Force Acts gave a great deal of thought to the alternatives to the old procedure under which those Acts were extended or renewed annually by an Army and Air Force (Annual) Bill. The Committee was concerned about the opportunities for obstruction and consumption of Parliamentary time afforded by the old procedure, but was anxious

also that the opportunities for debate which the old system allowed should not be lost, and that the new Acts should be kept up to date by review at reasonable intervals.
It therefore devised, I think at the suggestion of the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)—to whose work, in this respect at least, I am glad to add my tribute—the present system under which only four successive Orders in Council are permissible, legislation being necessary in the fifth year to extend the life of the Act. The Government have already explained that their intention is to arrange that the next five-yearly review should be carried out by a Select Committee. I only hope that the next Select Committee will be as successful as the last and that the Act can be brought up to date as necessary.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn: I deputise for my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey). I am sure that the House will join with me, as it did with the Secretary of State for War, in sending good wishes to my right hon. Friend and expressing regret that he is unable to be here today.
I do not imagine that this debate will occupy a great deal of time, because a lot of the ground was covered during the debate on the Army. I will follow the example of the Under-Secretary of State for Air who, with commendable brevity, discharged his duty to the House in moving this Motion. I will deal with one or two points that arose earlier and will try to relate them to the Air Force.
I think it right that in dealing with this matter the Minister should pay attention to the background of the Order which we now have to consider. We are all familiar with the great piece of Parliamentary work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) in achieving a complete revision of the Service Acts by tabling the Amendments in 1952. In the course of the earlier debate we have gone over the changes that have been brought about.
It is important that the new procedure which we are adopting of an annual continuation order should safeguard to the House the things which it has most valued since the Bill of Rights, its control of the Army. We are lucky in having


to guide us today not only the wisdom of Mr. Speaker and his deputies but also a new edition of Erskine May, which was published after the new Army Act had been published.
I will, if I may, and just for the record—because I attach very great importance to the procedure that we are initiating—quote two passages from Erskine May. I refer to page 742 of the new edition. There is a section on the Army and Air Force Acts which begins:
The consent of Parliament necessary to legalise the raising and keeping of a standing Army within the United Kingdom in time of peace was for many years so intimately connected with the grant of supplies to the Crown that Bills which gave that consent were limited to one year's duration.
Later, at the very end of the same section, the new editor of Erskine May points out that by the procedure laid down in the legislation of 1955, that is, of course, the Measure whose continuation we are now discussing,
the Commons reserve to themselves the power of determining whether a standing Army shall be kept in being in time of peace.
Therefore, when we debate this Order we debate not only the detailed questions to which I propose in a moment to direct attention, but also the continuing under the new procedure of our traditional right over the whole question of the control of the Armed Forces.
I am grateful for the way in which Mr. Speaker and other occupants of the Chair this evening have approached the question of the limits of order. Perhaps I may adapt the police caution which is used for criminals and say, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that any words you may say may be taken down and used in evidence against us. Your Ruling today will decide how far Parliament may be able in the future to discuss these matters.
I want to issue only one caveat to the House. We should be very careful, in preserving the forms of our Parliamentary rights and privileges as we do today, not to forget the reality, which is that, in modern circumstances, the control of the weapons of the Army has now passed from this House and, indeed, even from the Cabinet itself.
Lest I be thought to be out of order even in referring to this matter, I would ask the House to look at Section 177, which gives power of command to anyone who Her Majesty may decide should

be in command of our Armed Forces. Presumably, that power of command is that which commits our Air Force, as part of N.A.T.O. forces, and therefore takes the actual decision on peace and war from this House. It would be out of order for me to pursue that line but we should not forget the realities of modern war.
I should like briefly to put some practical questions to the Secretary of State for Air who, I believe, will wind up the debate. During the 10 or 11 months in which the Act has been working, has he experienced any difficulties, and particularly, is he accumulating these snags in preparation for the quinquennial review, which is still four years away? Since Parliament is deprived under the new procedure of the right of amending the Air Force Act every year, it is all the more necessary—I am sure that this is being done by the right hon. Gentleman and his Department—that snags encountered through experience should be put by in readiness for the quinquennial review.
I would ask a practical question about the problem of redundancy as affecting officers under the new defence procedures. The new defence arrangements mean, for many distinguished serving officers, the premature determination of the career which they chose, and it is appropriate, under the provisions of the Act, to ask how these redundancy arrangements are working and whether the Minister has any statement to make about them.
I come to a question which has occupied much attention today and must rightly be in the minds of all hon. Members, and that is the problem of recruitment. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley proposes to address the House again, if he should catch Mr. Speaker's eye.

Mr. George Wigg: Mr. George Wigg (Dudley) indicated assent.

Mr. Benn: I very much hope he will, because he speaks with such very great authority on recruitment. I therefore will not go in detail into the figures. The published figures made available on 8th November and today show that the short-term engagements are falling heavily and that the only sign of an upward trend is in the long-term engagements. Perhaps


the Minister will say something about this matter.
I should like to add some ideas of my own about the general problem of making Service life attractive, which has been the subject of so much comment in these debates. I begin with a reference to the so-called Grigg Committee which has recently been set up. Some very unkind things have been said about that Committee and it is undoubtedly true that the problem of making Service life attractive has been left for far too long uncared for. For all that—the fact that it is late, and so on—I think there is value in this Committee. I believe the one particularly inspired appointment, if I may pick one out, is the appointment of the editor of the Daily Mirror to serve on the Committee—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member, but I hope he will not pursue the question of the Grigg Committee too far, for that is a matter for the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. Benn: A great proportion of its work deals with enlistment and terms of service, and I very much hope that it will not be inappropriate to deal with it, as part of the Act is concerned entirely with the question of getting people into the Services.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The General recruiting arrangements can be discussed, but the question of the Grigg Committee is one affecting the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. Wigg: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. As the Order before the House has exactly the same wording as the Order dealing with the Army and as the Chair on the occasion of that discussion certainly allowed me to make substantial reference to the Grigg Committee, would you reconsider your Ruling and in doing so bear in mind that the gentleman in the Civil Service who has been appointed to act as Secretary has been drawn from the Air Ministry? Therefore, the question is particularly applicable to this Order.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: As I understand the position, detailed reference to the Grigg Committee would not be in order on this occasion.

Mr. Benn: I certainly did not propose to go into details of recruitment, but into the general problem of getting people into the Services, which has been the subject of a great deal of discussion earlier.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I only suggested that, as it was not in order to go into detail.

Mr. Benn: I should hate to think that the tablets of stone handed to the Chair were more restrictive in the case of the Air Force than of the Army. I greatly regret that Members of Parliament have not been used as members of any Committee investigating the question of Service life. The earlier parts of speeches made by the Ministers today have been of fulsome praise for the Select Committee which, under the leadership of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens), examined the working of the Act. It seemed rather curious after all those tributes to what in practice was a Parliamentary Committee working side by side with a Departmental Committee that there should be no thought of incorporating hon. Members of this House and associating them with the work of this new Committee.
I do not know whether the Secretary of State would be willing to consider this or make recommendations for it to be considered, as Members of Parliament are closely and intimately concerned with these problems and one might say that in their constituency capacity they act as welfare officers. I should be very much surprised if hon. Members were not quite as well able as people doing public opinion surveys to give useful ideas, which could be put into the Bill, on these general problems of making Service life attractive.
I fully accept what has been said this afternoon—that this Act is not the key to the problem of recruitment. The sergeant-major who wants to be unpleasant does not need the Air Force Act, nor does the flight sergeant or warrant officer. Similarly, the air officer who tries to protect himself will find that the least effective means is the Act. The barrack room lawyer is not completely safe from the bullying of the non-commissioned officer or the commissioned officer. The problem is not so much bullying as being behind the times in one's psychological approach.


That pay is an element has been mentioned, and conditions and accommodation are of course important, but the main element is that the job should be attractive and interesting. There is plenty of experience to show that recruitment for the most dangerous and difficult jobs, like those in submarines, or as air crews, or parachutists and so on, where conditions may be appalling and worse than those in which less exciting work is done, is not at all difficult. The real problem—I speak from a limited war-time experience—is what to do about the unavoidably dull jobs and how to create for the men asked to do those jobs a feeling that there they are worth while.
I do not pretend to know what the answer to this is, but I feel that an answer may lie in the principles which underlie the industrial approach. I want to be careful here because I do not want to say anything which would be unfair to serving or non-commissioned officers, but so far as possible I want to contrast the modern approach of management with the traditional approach of the Services. The first thing that comes to mind is that if one asks an ordinary personnel manager how to get the best out of a man he will say that the answer lies in being sure that the man always knows exactly what he is required to do and why he is required to do it.
On the whole, the Service tradition is absolutely the opposite of that. Whether it is the opposite now, in modern circumstances, to the extent to which it used to be I do not know, but it is certainly the general view of men that when a man is embodied in uniform the man in charge will think he can get more out of him if he does not tell him the reason he is required to perform this or that service. That is in complete contrast with modern industrial practice.
The second thing the modern man-manager will say is that if one wants to get the best out of a man it is better to ask his opinion, because in the field in which he is an expert he will possibly be richer in ideas than the supervising officer, but that is not the common Service approach. I was highly delighted and very surprised to discover that the Army had already begun to use the public opinion poll three years ago to find what factors influenced men in deciding

whether to re-engage or not. The Under-Secretary of State for War was too cagey to give the results of those inquiries, but it was the first time, I am informed, that public opinion technique had been used with Service men. I should like to sec this new Committee, or any Committee set up to examine the problem of recruitment, investigate the question of how far we can apply modern psychological techniques to the Services.
Thirdly, the difference between Service and civilian life is that most civilian managers will say that a man will give of his best if he is given the widest possible rein to use his own initiative and decision and is not "mucked about" in his job. Although I have no doubt that in the Services initiative is a highly prized quality and must remain so in the case of air crew and some very specialised jobs, it still remains true that in many jobs a man in uniform feels more supervised and controlled, not only when doing his job but in his daily life. The difference lies in the feeling one has in civilian life than one is respected as a person and individual. Eccentricity is welcomed and somewhat admired, but in the Services in the past it has not been possible, or thought possible, to recognise the existence of these divergencies.
Those are some of the elements which I very much hope will be investigated as part of the general review of the Air Force. Reference was made—and I would not entirely rule it out—to the rôle of idealism in the Service man, the man who joins because he believes that it is a worth-while career. I always feel that possibly "idealism" is not the right word to use, because it is more than just idealism. In many cases it is a political consciousness of the rôle which a person performs in the Service.
I was much struck on an occasion during the war, when I was an A.C.2 travelling in a troopship from the United Kingdom to South Africa, at the very stern treatment which we received from the commanding officer when it was proposed that we should have a meeting the subject of which was, "The world we are fighting for". I am afraid that I was partly responsible for organising the meeting, and I was summoned by the O.C. Troops to his office and told that under no circumstances were politics to


be permitted. To me, the case for the war was a political case.
One has to be very careful—one can carry it too far—in the Services not to eliminate that amount of self-thinking which is bound to include politics and which is an essential part of the personality, the individuality and the idealism of the individual serving man.
Finally, I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he introduced the Order and the House on the way on which the new procedure was adopted. I very much hope that some, at least, of the questions which I have put to the Secretary of State will be answered in his reply.

8.22 p.m.

Mr. George Wigg: The reminiscences of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol. South-East (Mr. Benn) of his early days in the Air Force recall to my mind my first contact with the Royal Air Force, back in the dawn of history, as one of my hon. Friends puts it. It was in 1922, and I was suddenly ordered to Constantinople, in the emergency of that time. I found myself on the good ship s.s. "Eboe" and found that the officer commanding the troops was Squadron Leader Tedder. I had been brought up on a diet of, Army discipline, but there I found the first distinction between discipline and "bull".
Subsequently, in various periods of my service I served with the Royal Air Force. For three years, in Iraq, I was attached to the Royal Air Force. I found that there was an absence of the strict, easy-going recognisable discipline which exists in good units of the Army and that one tended to swing from what the troops called "blimey" to "gorblimey". One never knew quite where one was, because it changed with changing moods. I later came to reflect on this. Perhaps it was inevitable in a force organised as the Royal Air Force is organised. It has to do a job and it must have a different approach.
When we sat on the Select Committee, therefore, and when we were considering whether we should have a separate Army Act and a separate Air Force Act, I was all in favour of a separate Air Force Act and of trying to look at the problems not through Army eyes but through Air

Force eyes. The Army is different from the Air Force and the Air Force is different from the Army. This does not mean that one is better than the other. They are different and are doing different jobs.
How far that difference can go can be seen when one looks at the Royal Air Force Regiment. I have a soft spot for the Royal Air Force Regiment. I believe that if the Government had had a little more guts the Royal Air Force Regiment might have saved our position in the Middle East at the time of the dismissal of Glubb Pasha. It would be wrong for me to go into strategy, or to delve too far into the situation in the Middle East, but I have a feeling that if the R.A.F. Regiment had been up to its job and if the Government had had some guts and had put the R.A.F. Regiment, in the Hastings which were available, into Mafrak the linchpin of British power might well have held and we might have avoided the Suez disaster.
Unfortunately, the R.A.F. Regiment is not what I should like it to be. I do not want to turn it into a Guards regiment, but I wish the men in it would get their hair cut and would get creases in their trousers and would get smartened up. I do not mean smartened up in terms of the Guards depôt but smartened up in terms of R.A.F. discipline. The point I wish to make, however, is that what I want and what we have is an Air Force Act to tackle Royal Air Force problems.

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: Before the hon. Member leaves the point about the R.A.F. Regiment, I should draw his attention to some of the very smart displays which they have given, not least at the Royal Tournament. They have set an example there which I am sure he would agree is second to none and which has been quite as good as that of the Brigade of Guards. I have seen these men, interviewed them and inspected them in this country and in most parts of Europe, and I have always found them to have a first-rate turnout. I am sure that the House would not wish it to be placed on record that the R.A.F. Regiment is anything but the best.

Mr. Wigg: It would have been better if the hon. Member had held his peace. This shows how unwise it is of the Government to put "Smart Alecs" in the Service Departments. The hon. Member


always makes capital, strikes the Box and goes for the obvious. This was the downfall of the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) in his early days in the War Office, but he has learned a lot since then. He, like the hon. Gentleman, can be compared to a pike on a frosty morning; he goes for the first thing that glitters and takes it hook, line and sinker.
If the hon. Member had given some thought to it he would have wanted to get rid of the Royal Tournament idea. He would have wanted to get rid of the annual flummery of the Horse Guards Parade, when the Queen troops the Colour. I very well remember sitting with my daughter outside Westminster Abbey on Coronation Day and seeing this wonderful display. The crowd cheered and hon. Members came along and said how marvellous it was.
Scratching my head, I asked myself, "How many chaps are left in the cook house? Whom is this intended to deceive? If the Armed Forces are putting on displays for television, this is magnificent—but it is not war." I am sure that it did not deceive the Soviet Military Attaché. We should get rid of all this pipe claying nonsense and the flummery which goes with it. War is a serious business. This country is not broke, but it is nearly broke. It can provide only enough money for the real thing, and that is seen not in how the hon. Member and his family clap their hands at the Royal Tournament but in whether there was enough air transport for Suez—and there was not. There was not enough air transport when Glubb Pasha went. I hope that the hon. Member will now leave House and resign before he talks any more arrant nonsense.
I was turning, before that absurd interruption, to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East had to say. I am sorry that he was ruled out of order on the subject of the Grigg Committee. It is not for me to challenge the Chair. The Chair gives its Rulings, I have my opinion, time marches on, and we shall see. When my hon. Friend spoke about the Bill of Rights he was clearly out of order, because the Bill of Rights has nothing to do with the Air Force. It has to do with the Army, of course, and I spoke about that in the Select Committee.

If my hon. Friend looks at Chapter 2 of the Queen's Regulations for the Royal Air Force he will see that
The power is vested in Her Majesty by Section 2 of the Air Force (Constitution) Act, 1917, to make orders with respect, inter alia, to the government of the Air Force.
That paragraph, which is, I understand, an enactment of this House, accounts for the substantial difference between the Royal Air Force and the Army. One of the things that I cannot understand—I wish the hon. Gentleman would tell me—is the point at which the line is drawn between exercise of prerogative and provivision by Statute.
I look at the opening words of the Air Force Act and of the Army Act and find that they are to make provision for the Air Force and for the Army. Then we find in both Acts that which makes it clear that the power of command is vested in the Sovereign, and under the Act which constituted the Royal Air Force we made it clear that its government is vested in the Sovereign, i.e., through the exercise of the prerogative.
But I cannot find out, though I have consulted what authorities are open to me, including the opinion, which I greatly respect, of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens), who was the Chairman of our Select Committee, as to where this line is drawn. I do not think that it has any practical effect, but it is an academic exercise and is very important for the guidance of the Chair when deciding what is and what is not in order.
I do not want to delay the House long, but I thought that I should be failing in my duty were I not to mention one or two matters. I have already paid tribute to the way the Army has done the preliminary work. I said that it was clear that once the Army and Air Force Bill became law that was only part of the job, and that it had to be carried into effect. The Army has produced an admirable Manual of Military Law, and the Air Force has produced an excellent Manual of Air Force Law. I have given the Army my praise, and have said that I only wished that all Army jobs were done as well as that.
The Air Force Manual is, if anything, better, because pages 1 to 22 contain a most valuable, and, I found, thrilling—historical introduction. I would go further. My hon. Friend the Member for


Brierley Hill (Mr. Simmons) said he wondered whether the Manual of Military Law was available to other ranks. Times have changed, and while I quite agree that there are not many other ranks who would pay 15s. for a copy, I should have thought that copies were available in the unit libraries—not to train barrack-room lawyers but so that the men could read all about it.
At the same time, I would say to the Secretary of State for Air that in the interests of the morale of the Royal Air Force he would be very wise, indeed, to make this publication available in units. The first 20 pages are much better than lots of the slush turned out by the Services to push their cause. The historical section is admirably written, and whilst I have almost lost the thrill that youth has, it gave me a thrill to read that history of the Royal Air Force and, for a moment, to be reminded of the gallantry over the last forty years of the officers and men who served in its ranks.
Both Services can be very proud indeed of the work that has been done. I do not know enough about the existing administration of the Royal Air Force or how it compares with that of the Army, which is my first love and about which I know a little more, but this is a first-class job of which the Royal Air Force can be proud.
We had a number of differences on the Select Committee, and on one or two points I managed to persuade some of my colleagues to take decisions which the Government resisted. We may have been right—there was one on forfeiture of pay—or we may have been wrong, but I believe that next year, or certainly the year after, the Secretary of State for War ought to tell us a little more how this Measure is working. I do not complain that that was not done today—a year is too soon—but in future years we should hear from the Government benches an account of how the Act is working.
I should like the Secretary of State to consider the publication of an annual report giving us some statistics about courts-martial, and the nature of the offences; some information about the educational certificates held by men on entering the forces, and about the certificates they gain while serving. I would like to have some details about hospitalisation. Here I am thinking of the kind

of thing that was published before the war—not elaborate, but containing sufficient information to enable hon. Gentlemen who are not conversant with everyday life in the forces to get a picture, if they care to be diligent enough, of what is happening.
The purpose of this debate is not merely an academic exercise, not a political exercise in which the Government justify to the House of Commons the extension of their power to maintain an Army and an Air Force. It is something more than that. Dare I say that we are here creating a way of life? The Secretary of State for Air and the Secretary of State for War have a responsibility to the House of Commons for their Services, but each has a responsibility also to his Service for the House of Commons.
The House of Commons ought to take a much greater interest in what happens in the Services than it has done in the past. It is an absolute disgrace that the Army and Air Force Acts became as out of date as they were. Because they were in that state, the Government have been in great difficulties about recruiting. In the years when the Government did not care a damn about the Army or the Air Force, they got a much better Army and a much better Air Force than they deserved. In times of crisis, neither the Army nor the Air Force ever let the country down. But during the years there is a tendency to forget.
It is not only a matter of the Secretary of State for War or the Secretary of State for Air speaking for their Services in this House. The further important matter is whether each will be able to handle problems in his Department much more easily and better, looking his own officials in the face, and facing the Army Council or the Air Council, if he is able to say, "The House of Commons wants to know what is happening and is prepared to give me every backing in making life tolerable and of a character which will encourage men to come in, and, having come in, to stay in." That, according to my understanding, should be the mood in which we approach these problems today.
I do not complain overmuch. This is the first debate, and I think that we have done much better than we might. We have not wandered too far from the kind of principles and ideas that members of the Select Committee had in mind—a


debate in addition to the Estimates in which we would discuss the code of discipline of the Services and a number of Service problems inside the framework of an Act. I am sure that we shall do better next year and in succeeding years. If the Secretary of State will help us by giving the maximum amount of information compatible with security, it would help us to help him to get the kind of Air Force we want.

8.38 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Air (Mr. George Ward): We are quite used to innovations in the Royal Air Force, and, by the same token, we are quite used to having teething troubles when we introduce innovations. It is, therefore, very refreshing indeed to say about the new Air Force Act that its introduction has been entirely without teething troubles, without worries and without difficulties. Of course, I realise that it has been in force for only 11 months. Perhaps, it is asking a little too much of it that we should be able to find out all the snags about it, if any, in that very short time, particularly as some of its provisions have not yet been tested. But we can say with confidence, I think, that we are through the difficult transition period, and through it smoothly and without trouble.
While congratulating the Royal Air Force on taking this new Service code in its stride, as it has done, I should like also to add my tribute to the many already paid to those to whom tribute really belongs, namely, the members of the Select Committee which did its task so well and, as I believe, forged a new and really efficient instrument for the control of the Royal Air Force in the future.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) asked if we were collecting snags and making a note of them against the day when we shall have another five-year review. I can assure him that we are. I believe that, so far, the cupboard is empty. If we come across any, we shall certainly note them.
The hon. Gentleman also asked why there were no Members of Parliament looking into the question of recruiting, and pointed out very fairly that Members can be useful in their constituency capacity in helping us to recruit for all three Services. I cannot deal with why there is no Member of Parliament on

the Grigg Committee without wandering out of order, even if it were my business to do so, which it is not. I quite agree with him that Members of Parliament can and have often been in the past extremely useful in their constituencies in helping us with a problem of this kind After all, this is a common problem which we all want to have solved. We all want to sec the end of National Service, and we shall all regret very much if it is found impossible to end it in 1962. Therefore, the more help hon. and right hon. Members can give us in their constituencies and the more suggestions they bring to us about ways in which we can improve recruiting, the more pleased and the more grateful we shall be.
The hon. Member for Bristol. South-East also spoke of the attitude of officers and N.C.O.s towards airmen in relation to the equally important problem of internal recruiting. I agree with him again. I am bound to say, from what I know of the Royal Air Force, that the officer-airman relationship is one of which we can be very proud indeed. I agree that it requires constant vigilance to make sure that it remains good. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are very conscious of that problem too. I am grateful to him for the helpful way in which he put his points.
Let me say some further words about recruiting, because that seems to be the most important matter. Our task in the sphere of recruiting is twofold. On the one hand, we must recruit over the next five years officers, airmen and airwomen in the numbers, of the quality, with the qualifications and on the lengths of engagement we need to give us a properly balanced all-Regular Air Force. At the same time we must try to persuade substantial numbers to stay in the Air Force and prolong their engagements. We certainly have no inclination whatever to under-estimate the size of this task. It is a formidable one, but it is worth looking at carefully.
It is in the ground trades that the problem of recruiting is greatest. Our long-term aim must be to recruit an average of between 10,000 and 11,000 men each year, including about 3,500 boys and apprentices. This is only the rate of recruitment we need to keep the all-Regular force up to strength. While we


are still building it up, we need, in addition to that 10,000 or 11,000 a year, about another 5,000 a year, mainly on three, four and five-year engagements. In addition to this, we must succeed in maintaining a reasonable rate of extensions and re-engagements. Although it is a formidable task, I do not think that it is by any means an impossible one.
We have heard a good deal about the anxiety over the fall in recruiting during the past few months as compared with the same months of last year. I appreciate that anxiety, and I do not for one moment pretend that we are not anxious, too. Even so, there are some very encouraging signs. For example, the drop in recruiting, as I explained recently at Question Time, has occurred mainly in the case of men undertaking the shorter engagements. The numbers coming in on the important long-term engagements, for nine years or more, show an increase over last year's figures. In the case of apprentices and boy entrants, who, after all, will be the long-term hard core of the future Regular Service, the number of apprentices is about 30 per cent. up on last year and the number of boy entrants is nearly 20 per cent. up. Indeed, the targets that we set ourselves for both these categories have been fully met.
The position is also encouraging in certain important groups of trades—for example, the aircraft and air engineering maintenance trades, in which we are within sight of 100 per cent. manning with Regulars. Another hopeful sign is the value we are getting in terms of recruits from the Air Training Corps. This year, over 40 per cent. of the total entry of apprentices and boy entrants was drawn from people who had served in the Air Training Corps. This is the highest percentage of ex-A.T.C. recruits we have ever reached.
Those are encouraging signs. Certainly, none of this suggests that the career which the Royal Air Force can offer is without appeal to the young men of today. What it does look like, however, is that the main difficulty in recruitment will lie in getting the recruits we need in certain specialist trades, such as signals and radar operation and also in the domestic and administrative trades. I believe that we shall have no difficulty in getting recruits in the interesting trades, but we shall, I

think, have difficulty in getting them in the less interesting trades.
Turning to officers, it is significant that the number of candidates for entry to Cranwell is allowing us to keep very close to our target. Their quality has improved and we are beginning to feel the advantage of the R.A.F. scholarship scheme which we introduced in 1953. The first scholars from that scheme are now with us. The entry of cadets to the technical college at Henlow has also improved. This also reflects the benefits of the scholarship scheme, which now applies to Henlow cadets as well as to the Cranwell cadets.
I do not want to minimise the difficulty of the task which faces us in recruiting—it would be unwise to do so—but there are, at least, these encouraging pointers to the success of our aims. Therefore, despite the size and complexity of the recruitment problem as a whole, and although there are certain important specialist classes in which the position is particularly difficult, there are grounds for hoping that by the end of 1962 we shall have achieved our aim of an adequate all-Regular force. Particularly gratifying is the high level of recruitment on the long-term commissions and engagements.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East also asked what progress we are making in operating the scheme of premature retirement by officers. I am glad that matter was raised, because it is very important and I welcome the opportunity of saying something about it.
May I remind the House of the basis which was laid down in the White Paper for the selection of officers and airmen for premature retirement? The White Paper said that once we had worked out the detailed composition and rank structure of the Air Force we would be able to determine the extent of the redundancy in each of the many branches within the categories or "bands", as we call them, where the surpluses would occur, and we would give officers and men an opportunity to apply to be retired. Further, we said that it would be our aim, as far as practicable, to select officers and men to be retired from among those who applied.
The first instruction to the Royal Air Force was sent out within a few days of the White Paper being issued. It was limited to redundancies which would arise up to October, 1958. There were two


reasons for this. The first was that the most rapid part of the rundown of the Royal Air Force will be happening in the next 12 months. After that, the curve will be flattening out quite considerably. Secondly, we were much clearer in our minds about the precise requirements by rank and branch over the next year or two than we should have been if we had been looking a good deal further ahead. Therefore, we gave officers until 30th September to apply for premature retirement up to October, 1953.
We received about 1,900 applications. This figure included some officers who were not in the defined bands, but the bulk was made up of 40 per cent. of the total of the officers within the categories. These, of course, were the most senior officers within each rank and branch and therefore constituted the most likely field of applicants. There was nothing very surprising about that.
We have examined all these applications very carefully and we have decided that the total to be retired in this first phase, up to October, 1958, is about 1,000. It is a somewhat larger figure than we at first thought likely, but it is very small in comparison with the total officer content of the Service, and, of course, a large number of officers would be retiring in any case in the normal way. We depend upon a combination of both to achieve the rundown. We are anxious that officers should know as quickly as possible what has been the Air Council's decision, so as to keep right down to the minimum the personal anxiety and uncertainty that is bound to accompany any scheme of this kind.
We have already been able to tell several hundreds whether their applications have been approved or not, and we are hoping to tell the rest of the first phase by the end of this year whether their applications have been accepted or not. Hon. Members will remember that the White Paper said—and this is most important from the point of view of the long-term morale, contentment and efficiency of the Air Force—that, provided we were able to maintain the right balance of age, experience and special skill in each branch, we should try to limit our retirements to those who had applied.
I am glad to say that in most individual ranks and branches the number of applications received exceeds the number of retirements necessary. Therefore, we shall not have to retire compulsorily more than a very few officers who have not applied. Although this is only the first phase, it will be the biggest one, because the bulk of our rundown is happening in the next year. We are proposing to publish next spring a further invitation to officers to apply for premature retirement. This second phase will deal with redundancies arising between 1st October, 1958, and March, 1960.
I am afraid that I cannot give the House as much information about airmen because we gave them, in the first phase, up to 31st October to decide whether they wanted to apply. Their applications, therefore, came in a little later than those of the officers, and we are still sorting them out. The same rules applied. We defined the age groups and trade classifications within which we invited airmen to apply for premature retirement, and we hope to be able to tell them by the end of the year what the decisions have been.
Finally, the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) drew the attention of the House to the introduction of the Manual of Air Force Law and asked whether this was avaliable to all ranks of the Royal Air Force. I am very glad that he did so, because it gives me an opportunity to pay a tribute to Dr. Noble Frankland who wrote Chapter 2, and I quite agree that it is beautifully written. It is available in the library on stations and I will consider his suggestion, which I think is a very good one, that Chapter 2 might be made available on a larger scale and in a handier form. I will certainly consider whether we can do that. I am quite sure that anyone who reads Chapter 2 of the Manual will feel as proud of the Royal Air Force as I do every time I see it in action.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Draft Air Force Act, 1955 (Continuation) Order, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — MILFORD HAVEN CONSERVANCY BILL

Bill now standing committed to a Standing Committee committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Heath.]

Committee Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — TRADE WITH CHINA

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Finlay.]

8.57 p.m.

Mr. G. B. Drayson: We were all very interested to hear at the beginning of the Parliamentary Summer Recess that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade was to visit South-East Asia and that during the course of his journey he would be paying a visit to the Chinese mainland. We all welcome visits of Ministers abroad to promote trade, although, of course, it is the business man who ultimately has to conduct the trade by getting together with his opposite number in the country concerned. It is most encouraging when Ministers go on these arduous journeys to try to promote the business of the nation.
I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary will have an opportunity tonight to give to the House some of his impressions of that tour. It so happens that this debate coincides with the departure from this country tomorrow of an important Chinese economic and technical mission, led by Dr. Ch'i Chao-ting. In fact, a farewell reception was held at the office of the chargé d'affaires this evening at which both the Minister of State and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade were present. When we see two Ministers from the Board of Trade attending a function of that kind, we can at least assume that the Government are taking this subject very seriously. A number of Members from both sides of the House also attended, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Sir R. Boothby) who, I have a feeling, will be on his way to Peking via Huddersfield very shortly, following on what I have seen in the daily Press today about his recent latest interest in the business world. The reception was

attended by a comprehensive group of British industrialists and none of our leading firms was missing. Those to whom I spoke gave me the impression that they were extremely keen on promoting trade with the Chinese mainland.
The technical mission that has been over here for six weeks has visited over 200 factories and institutes, including Harwell, Calder Hall, The Royal Aeronautical College and Liverpool University, where it saw the cyclotron. At the same time we have had in this country two other missions from China. One, a textile mission, consisted of seven persons. They are still here and they have visited Lancashire and Yorkshire and, I believe, factories and mills in my own constituency. It is hoped that business will result from their visit. I am told that a building mission has also been over here, the members of which spent some time at the Building Exhibition and visited a number of firms connected with the trade.
The main economic mission about which I am speaking was invited by the Sino-British Trade Council. This is a new organisation set up to promote trade with China. From discussions with the people concerned. I know that they are always looking for some organisation which will assist them in that rather difficult part of the world. I hope that this organisation will be found to be the setup for which they are looking, and that no firms will find that they are excluded. A problem has arisen over the last few years in that some of what we regard as the old China hands have fallen out of the trade and a number of new China hands have entered it. This has created a certain amount of friendly rivalry. To my mind, that is a good thing, because it is not right that any one section of the community or the trading world should think that it has a monopoly in any area. These areas should be free and competitive for all those who have the energy and the enterprise to try to penetrate them.
I was glad to see in The Times this morning that Dr. Ch'i Chao-ting said at a Press Conference before leaving that his mission had found many items of interest in the United Kingdom, and that increased trade could be expected. He also said, and this is important, that China now had an export balance with the United Kingdom.
I have myself been interested in trade with China and Eastern European countries for over five years, and the Parliamentary Secretary knows the part he personally played in stimulating that interest. This country has had a long and honourable trade association with the people of China. We have always found that the word of a Chinaman was his bond, and people tell me that before the war their trading relationships with that country could not have been happier. Therefore, many of them want to pick up the threads which, unfortunately, have been broken in recent years.
I as much as anybody else regret the circumstances which have led to the reduction in trade. It is not part of my object tonight to touch on the political considerations which have resulted in that. Nor do I think that it is a good thing to start trade discussions or negotiations by criticising the form of Government or the Ministers of any country with whom one hopes to conclude a business arrangement. Those things can happen in foreign affairs debates, or among diplomats, but the business community does not want to have any part in them. At the same time, business men look to the Government for guidance, because the Government have wider considerations in respect of other countries with whom they want to maintain the fullest co-operation.
I was told this evening that the mission was well received wherever it went and that one firm even laid on a private aeroplane to take the mission from one appointment to another. The question arose about Chinese trainees coming to England to learn techniques.

Mr. John Rankin: Or Scotland.

Mr. Drayson: Yes, or Scotland. They were to come to the United Kingdom to learn how to use machines and the new techniques which they hope to acquire.
One leading firm to whom I spoke said that they had no objection whatsoever to that, but felt that the place to discuss such things was Peking and not London. I am told that the firms were impressed by the vast knowledge of the Chinese mission and by the products which it appeared to require. The old trade which they knew before the war, they told me, is a thing of the past and the Chinese are

asking for much higher-grade products and had interests much more widely spread than hitherto.
Here again, it is necessary for firms anxious to trade in that part of the world to adjust their thinking to the new conception of a planned economy. The Chinese are embarking on their second five-year plan and it is necessary for business men to study what that plan is. They are not asked to say whether they approve of it, or whether the Government concerned are arriving at the right conclusions, or whether the plan is sound, but at least if they know something about the plans for the road building, electrification, textile and agricultural programmes, they are able to assess what part we can play in providing goods for those enterprises Of course, that is the reason why the mission came over here—in anticipation of the second five-year plan and to see what part British industry could play in providing the goods needed.
This, perhaps, is where the Government come into the picture, because they can give some guidance on matters such as payments, whether the Government are providing E.C.G.D. cover to those who are exporting to the China mainland, whether a definite figure has been decided for how much cover can be given and what credit policy the City of London should adopt towards long-term or medium-term credits to China.
An ex-Member of the House, who used to sit on these benches, asked me tonight what the Government intended to do about a further modification of the strategic controls. It must be agreed that in an age when we have Sputniks going round the world, not having been launched by any country in the West, the idea that we have a number of technical secrets or special machines about which the other half of the world should not know is a little out of date.
Nevertheless, my experience, in talking to these businessmen, is that they need a constant reassurance that in penetrating these markets they are acting in conformity with Government policy. That is one of the matters upon which I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to touch tonight. In his speech on the Address the President of the Board of Trade reaffirmed that the more East-West trade we could do, the better. He seemed to suggest that he would like this to take place


largely in consumer goods; but consumer goods are a two-way traffic, and we must be prepared to accept items as soft as those which we wish to export.
The President went on to indicate what a tremendous market there could be for washing machines in the Soviet Union and, no doubt, in the Chinese mainland, but he must realise that the prelude to the use of washing machines is electrification, and the first contribution that we can make—and I know how anxious electrical firms are to participate in this—is to assist the Chinese in their vast electrification programmes. When that has been put under way the washing machines and all the other apparatus requiring electricity will no doubt be bought from this country upon a competitive basis.
Next to the European market, Russia and China have the largest populations which can be exploited—I use the word "exploited" in a quite friendly way—technically and commercially, as potential customers for our goods. I have always felt that these two markets should not be ignored. As it is, Western Germany is doing a great deal more trade with the Chinese mainland than we are.
I understand that the figures for January-August of this year show that Western Germany imported £9·4 million worth of goods from China—which was 14 per cent. more than the United Kingdom did—and exported £13·6 million worth to the Chinese mainland. I should not like to suggest that they were exporting the type of equipment or goods which our own manufacturers are precluded from doing, but there is a definite suspicion in industry that that is the case. Our own exports to China over the same period were £7·4 million. As for Japan, their exports were two-and-a-half times the amount of British exports. One cannot forget that these were two countries which we defeated in the war. Now they are doing infinitely more trade than we are with one of our oldest customers.
As I have said, the Chinese nation is embarking upon its second five-year plan. It would be churlish not to wish it success in this. I hope that it will contribute to their happiness and well-being, and raise the standard of living of the population, and that British industry will be able to play its part in furthering its aims in a world of peace.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. John Rankin: I wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) on his speech. In every respect it was an excellent contribution to the solution of a problem which has disturbed us for far too long. I regret that the viewpoint he put so well has not been more commonly accepted by hon. Members on that side of the House. I hope that the hon. Gentleman has struck a new note and that we shall hear from the benches opposite more voices seeking to come to a more favourable solution than we have reached so far on this question of trade with China.
A long campaign has been conducted from this side of the House on the issue of trade with China. It resulted in an announcement a few months ago that the differential between the strategic ban on Russian and China trade would be wiped out. With the hon. Member for Skipton, I hope that that is only a partial step and that the Government will consider the advisability of going the whole way. I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary can say something about it tonight as a result of his visit to China, but it would be a happy conclusion to the events which have been occurring over the last few weeks were he able to say that the ban is to be abolished altogether.
As the hon. Member for Skipton pointed out, the ban is being ignored by some Western nations. In the College of Iron and Steel, in Peking, last autumn. I saw a piece of apparatus which is on the list of banned goods. We are honouring the agreement but, as was indicated by the hon. Member for Skipton, West Germany is one of the nations which is not, and is profiting accordingly.
With the hon. Member and the Parliamentary Secretary, I attended tonight's function at the office of the chargé d'affaires, in Portland Street, and I had the opportunity of a word with Dr. Ch'i Chao-ting. He seems very happy about the outcome of his mission and I was glad to hear from him that those of his experts who had visited many industries in Scotland had come back with good prospects. I agree that that applies to the whole of the United Kingdom.
What impressed everyone tonight was the nature of the audience present at that


function. I am sure that it must have impressed the Parliamentary Secretary. I stood for a while at the door listening to the names being announced. Although I did not know the gentlemen, I recognised the names of some of the most famous people in British industry. That is a good thing. In a way it is a remarkable thing, because it shows that the industrial magnates of the United Kingdom are keen to trade with China. They recognise that a market of 600 million people simply cannot be ignored and that it is stupid to do so.
I do not think that it would be wrong to say that most of those gentlemen are supporters of the party opposite and perhaps contribute to its funds. Yet it is the party opposite which has beeen opposing their desires and aims all the time.
It is a ridiculous position to land ourselves into. It has been political in its inspiration. We have been the victims of the Chincom Committee, in Paris. Because America has said that a certain line must be followed in regard to China for political reasons we have humbly followed the road that she marked out for us.
Not only have we refused new business but, as the hon. Member has said, we have destroyed old and existing good business. I have quoted in this House the example of the Bergius firm, in Glasgow, which had a long-standing trading contract with China in the export of diesel engines. Its trade was stopped, even though the Chinese were willing to continue it. The firm was anxious that it should be resumed, and it approached me. HANSARD will show that I have raised this matter, but to no avail.
In the spring of this year I received an extraordinary reply from the President of the Board of Trade, who said that one reason why we could not have trade with China was that she would require to go to Russia to get loans to finance that trade. The hon. Member for Skipton has told us tonight what I told the President of the Board of Trade in the spring, that China had a sterling balance of about £150 million. I received that information from sources which are beyond question, and it is true. The balance was there. It is possible that during the period of our inactivity this year the balance may have been whittled down a little because

so many other countries are anxious to trade with China.
We, or at least the Government, are not agitated greatly about trade with China. Superficially, at least, to judge by the activity and the response from the Government Front Bench, the Government have not been bothering a great deal. Repeatedly, over three years, they have rejected the suggestions which have come from this side about trade with China.
In the autumn of last year, when I was in China with colleagues from both sides of the House, we were assured by the Ministers of Trade and Commerce, the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and others, that a growing number of countries were anxious to trade with China and that China was establishing trading agreements with countries in South-East Asia and the Middle East. While we were there a trade mission was going to Japan to try to establish a trade agreement. Perhaps a good part of the trade that might have come our way has already fallen into other hands. I am sure that the hon. Member for Skipton would agree that if that has happened it is most unfortunate for this country.
I could talk for a long time on this subject; I have been talking about it for nearly three years. I remember the Easter Adjournment debate I initiated on this subject, when the Foreign Office responded and I got a very unhelpful reply indeed. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give a more helpful response to his hon. Friend the Member for Skipton than I got in the Easter Adjournment debate from the Foreign Office.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Harold Davies: First, may I say how grateful I am to the Minister for being in his place so early this evening because the main debate collapsed, and the Minister has definitely shown his great interest in this subject by being on the Front Bench in time to hear his hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) open this valuable and important debate. Whatever else I may say. I do say that the House is grateful to the Minister for paying this attention to a vital matter at this juncture. The hon. Member for Skipton had the courage to come with me in 1952 and 1953 to the Far East and Russia—

Mr. Drayson: Not to the Far East.

Mr. Davies: I stand corrected, but the hon. Member was with me in Moscow when we tried to open up this question. Some of us have suffered all kinds of silly names, being called fellow travellers and all that idiotic phraseology in the cheap newspapers, but Britain does not live unless she can export. If in the name of ideology and politics we are to neglect a market of 600 million people we shall deserve a lower standard of living.
As the hon. Member said, in debates on foreign affairs we can attack ideologies, but when we are talking of trade, even if we are considering people with a Communist Government, we must realise that they are the most keen businessmen in the world. I have seen them in action, not only in the Far East, but all over Europe and also in the United States of America. The Russian engineer and the Chinese engineer devote their lives to their work because they believe in something. Unfortunately, the West does not believe in anything; we are becoming completely cynical. We do not believe in Christianity and we do not believe in Conservatives—[Horn. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is no good hon. Members on this side of the House saying "Hear, hear" for I am not so sure that the public believe in us at the moment. This is a serious philosophical and political point in the history of the Western world.
Here is something stimulating, real and concrete, the building up of trade with a new nation fighting its way through the hard rock of poverty to new standards of life. For eight years we fought in our own party to get this recognition. Now our policy is clear on the matter. We say that when we are in power—and that will not be long in coming we shall recognise China and try to get her a seat on the Security Council. If the United States of America is idiotic enough to think that it can keep a nation of 600 million people out of the comity of nations for the purposes of politics it deserves an elementary lesson in world politics and world economics.
When I travelled between Wuhan and Peking, I saw the mighty bridge built by the Russians across the Yangtse. I spoke to a Chinese engineer there. He was about sixty years of age and had been trained at the Imperial College of Science in London. He said, "I only

wish some of our young Chinese boys could come to London to be trained in your engineering and technical schools." Because of this idiocy of visas and political differences we are afraid of allowing young Chinese to enter this country to be technically trained. Does it not follow as day follows night that if they get the technical training in this country they are more likely to use the "know-how" and machines of British industry? Let us get rid of the dusty old 1920 cobwebs of building a barrier against China. We can make the same mistake with China that we made with Russia after the 1914–18 war and develop xenophobia against Britain.
The trade mission which has been in Britain was impressed, but I must make a criticism to which I hope British business men will listen. The mission went to many factories and were shown around by men and women with different points of view, many of them, perhaps, Conservatives. That does not matter. We wanted the trade. One point which was absurd, however, was that there was too much silly secrecy about British processes. Many of these Chinese experts, especially the technicians and those in the building industry, wanted information about our "know-how," but everybody seemed to be afraid that they would copy it. There is no need to be afraid of copying. It is rather like this silly business of the secrecy about the hydrogen bomb. We have reached a point when a sixth-form schoolboy who studies enough nuclear physics will one day be able to make a hydrogen bomb from a tin of condensed milk and a little bit of apparatus.

Mr. Drayson: I hope the hon. Member will agree that there are certain industrial and technical processes which we would not show to the Americans or anybody else. If a firm developed a new process of making artificial fibre, for instance nylon, we should want to keep that in the country for as long as possible. Just because certain parts of an establishment are not available for inspection, it must not be assumed that there is something sinister and quite apart from the ordinary commercial practices.

Mr. Davies: I qualified my statement. I said "the silly secrecy". It seems to be creeping over the world. Everyone


is going around whispering in everybody else's ear. We are talking a kind of padded cell politics. Hon. Members should have listened to the Prime Minister's answers today about the hydrogen bomb. To me, in the twentieth century, that is padded cell politics and this is padded cell economics.

Mr. Raymond Gower: It is a good phrase, anyway.

Mr. Davies: It sounds good and it is correct. When a population of 40 million people, in order to please America, will not trade with 600 million people, that is padded cell economics. I wish my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) would not keep walking around like a Jack-n-the-box.

Mr. Rankin: A Jack-in-the box does not walk.

Mr. Davies: The hon. Member for Skipton said that China has a planned economy. The truth is that United States capitalism must now use the planned system. In some fields private enterprise is so large that there must be planned economy in the world. While he second five-year plan continues in China, it would be foolishness on our part not to try to get the maximum amount of trade with China for this country. Hon. Members on all sides of the House who have travelled in the Far East can confirm that other countries are trading with China.
I remember travelling on a TU104 this summer and seeing a Polish engineer who had been building harbours for the Chinese in Canton. A Swedish firm was selling ball bearings, but British firms were kept out of China because the Chincom Committee had said so. If hon. Members opposite are directors of firms and they send contracts to Paris, they will find that the terms of those contracts are known to all the Western countries in the Chincom Committee. Much advantage has been taken from contracts sent by manufacturers to the Chincom Committee.
We should tell the United States of America tonight that we want a complete revision of the strategic list. My hon. Friend corrected me about the bridge, but he was not correct in his comments about the strategic list because the other

night we had a silly Statutory Instrument by which we were to prevent blueprints from going to the Far East or Russia. It is silly—

Mr. Rankin: if my hon. Friend will allow me—

Mr. Davies: No, I am busy now.

Mr. Rankin: The differential—

Mr. Davies: No, I am very busy, and I cannot give way.
We must look at the set-up in the British Embassy in Peking. That is not meant in a derogatory sense at all, but the old-fashioned set-up in embassies is finished. It does not merely mean Eton. Harrow, Cambridge or Oxford and a little fluency in an Oriental language and then to be bumped into an embassy abroad. In those embassies we want a few men who can use a spanner and who know what an electric spark is a few men with a little technical knowledge—and men who can give the right technical information. The paucity of information dished out by the embassies in the Orient about the revolutionary and nationalistic forces moving there is absolutely bewildering, and I hope that when a Labour Government come in they will change the set-up in those embassies.
I think that the Board of Trade—and this was a very constructive point put forward by the hon. Member for Skipton, if he does not think it presumptuous of me to say so—should be helping with some sort of export guarantee those people who are willing to adventure in trade in the Far East. Is it beyond the wit of the Board of Trade, of British merchants and British industry to find a formula by means of which we might get the co-operation of the merchant bankers during a transitional period while triangular trade is being developed and while I hope, in heaven's name, common sense will prevail? Guarantee should be given to small firms as well as to big ones who have the courage to pioneer in the Far Eastern market.
British business needs a lead. I want British businessmen, whatever their politics, to feel that if they are struggling for trade with China, or Vietnam, which is also, or was, on the strategic list and is a developing new country, they are not playing a dirty game, and are not frowned upon by the Board of Trade


when pioneering British machines, British enterprise, British consumer and British capital goods in the Far East.
If tonight the Minister cannot take responsibility for the strategic list, for a complete reorientation of Far Eastern policy or for the inadequacies of his Prime Minister, there is one thing that he can do. He can get up tonight—and, after all, some Ministers have been to the Chinese Embassy tonight—and tell British businessmen, "If you are trying for trade with China and the Far East, we do not think that you are fellow-travellers or 'Commies'. We think that you are doing a job to raise the standard of living in Britain, and we will do all that we can to encourage you without whispering behind your backs."
That would help British businessmen to feel that if they were pioneering in Peking, far from betraying Great Britain, they were helping her to a new lease of greatness that, I am sure, she can achieve if she has a sensible policy towards the Far East, and towards those 600 million people struggling for better material and spiritual standards of life.

9.40 p.m.

Mr. Ernest Thornton: I should like to express my appreciation of the valuable and courageous speech made by the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson). This is a matter which the House should consider very seriously. I have long held the view that strategic bans or limitations of trade with China are a crass stupidity in the world we are living in today.
I know a little about the subject, because, before I was a Member of the House I was a member of the United Kingdom Trade Mission to China which was sent out by Sir Stafford Cripps in 1946, led by a former Member of the House. Sir Leslie Boyce, later Lord Mayor of London. On that trade mission, we made an abortive attempt to establish trade relations with a China which was obviously collapsing. If it was good tactics to send a mission to China in 1946 under the Chiang Kai-shek régime, we should certainly send one out now if we are really serious about expanding trade.
In 1954, eight years after my first visit, I was privileged to visit China again. Nineteen forty-six was three years before

the final collapse of the Chiang Kai-shek régime; 1954 was five years after the Communists had come to power. Anyone wishing to make a realistic appraisal of the difference in the industrial activity and industrial potential could not fail to be impressed by the situation on the latter occasion. It is a great mistake to allow our political prejudices to interfere with our trading prospects if we are to build up our economy and if Britain is to remain strong and powerful in the world.
In the world of today, the strength of a nation in the last resort rests in its industrial potential and scientific and technical skills. These have been developed in China at a tremendous pace. I have been to China on two occasions, and I have been to Russia also on two occasions, first in 1936 and later, in the post-war years. There is no doubt that the industrial, scientific and technical achievements of the Soviet Union are tremendous, but I make so bold as to say that what it has taken Russia 40 years to do China will accomplish in 20 years.
Therefore, in the vast industrial expansion which is taking place and will take place at an increasing tempo in China, we ought to be in on the ground floor. There can be no doubt about that if we are to be sensible about our economic future.
The strategic bans were placed on China, doubtless, to prevent her becoming strong and powerful as a Communist Power. Notwithstanding the Western boycott of trade with China, China's trade and industrial production in 1954 was the highest to that date in her recorded history. It is obvious, therefore, that the West cannot prevent China's industrial expansion, whatever boycotts we impose, Russia is behind her. What we do not do, Russia will do, with her industrial system, her technicians and scientists, assisted also by the countries of Eastern Europe, some of which, like Czechoslovakia, have very advanced economies and industrial systems. The job is being done by those countries and will continue to be done.
We must appreciate that there is in the world now a self-generating economy within the Communist orbit. The countries within that orbit can isolate themselves, if they wish, from the rest of the world. Their great industrial development, scientific advance and technical


know-how will carry on in spite of us. That is plainly proved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) referred to seeing the great bridge across the Yangtse River. That bridge had not been started when I was there in 1954. We saw the completion of the Han River Bridge. Three years ago the Yangtse River bridge had not been started, yet it is now complete, probably one of the greatest bridges in the world. The chief engineer in its construction was a Chinese engineer. I met him in 1954, when he was the engineer responsible for the construction of the Han River bridge.
In 1946 when I was there with the United Kingdom Trade Mission we visited the great steel works at Anshan which the Japanese had built. It was a shambles. It had been destroyed by the Communists. The Russians had taken out many of the vital parts. We had one of Dorman Long's experts with us in 1946. He took a very dim view of the prospect of rehabilitating this huge steel works with an output of 1 million tons a year, the largest steel works in Asia. He contended that the job could not be done except with the aid of Japanese, German. American or British experts. When I was there in 1954 I made sure that we visited Anshan again. This enormous steel works had been completely rehabilitated and its output exceeded that of the highest period when the Japanese were operating it.
I also visited in 1946 the great opencast coal mine at Fushun, the greatest opencast coal mine in the world, which under the Japanese attained an output of 8 million tons in one year. In 1946 that was again a shambles. It was paralysed. Practically nothing was being produced. In 1954 the production of that mine had returned to 4 million tons of coal a year.
These great developments are taking place. Doubtless the Minister saw some of them when he was there. I hope that the House will take note of what has been said tonight by the hon. Member for Skipton. I hope the Government will have some useful pronouncement to make on this subject. Nothing we can do and nothing America can do can prevent the continued expansion of industry in China. If we have any sense as a great industrial nation, with a scientific knowledge and a

technical know-how and trading experience to contribute, we shall be in on the ground floor and we shall build up again a great trade with China.

9.47 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll): I am sure that we are most grateful to the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) for initiating this miniature debate on trade with China, which has enabled a number of our colleagues in the House to express their views. If I do not reply fully to all the points raised, I hope that hon. Members will appreciate that I must confine my remarks to our trading relations with China. I will not attempt to follow the problem into the rather wider fields which the hon. Member pursued in his interest in this subject.
All hon. Members have referred to the existence of the strategic ban. I think that all hon. Members asked to what extent the British Government are serious about the development of trade with China. I want to make it plain that the Government are in earnest about the development of trade with China. We are very desirous of seeing an increase in trade. To that end, we relaxed the embargo on exports to China on 30th May of this year. This has quite properly led to a renewed interest in the development of trade with China. I stress this particularly, because some hon. Members have spoken as though that relaxation of the embargo was of small significance.
A very wide range of goods formerly embargoed can now be exported. For example, mining machinery, excavators, cranes, contractors' plant, surveying instruments, rubber tyres and tubes, various chemicals and metals can all be exported which were formerly on the list. In addition, most internal combustion engines can now be exported, which will be of interest to the firm mentioned by the lion Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin). The embargo has been lifted on most motor vehicles and tractors, most electrical furnaces, railway locomotives, rolling stock and railway equipment.
I could go on with further additions to the list. It represents a very substantial relaxation and it brings the China list into line with the Soviet list. I mention that particularly, because our trade with the Soviet Union is growing rapidly and is


now at about the highest level ever, and that is with a Soviet list which is the same as the China list. It is worth reminding the House that there is great scope for trade with China, despite the present embargo list, as we have been able to prove in our growing trade with the Soviet Union.
The hon. Member for Govan referred to a breaking of the rules on the part of the countries of Western Europe. That charge has often been made, but we in the Board of Trade have never been able to trace any specific case of a participating country breaking the embargo. One hon. Member referred to ball bearings from Sweden, but Sweden, of course, is not a participating country.
The hon. Member for Govan referred to instruments in the Iron and Steel Technological Institute. I went round the same Institute and I saw the instruments. The only thing I would say to the hon. Member would be to ask whether he was quite sure of the boundary line between West Germany and East Germany. I was certainly deceived and thought that they were West German instruments, but when I looked at the nameplates I found that the instruments were from East Germany.

Mr. Rankin: The nameplate was from West Germany.

Mr. Erroll: In that event, it may not have been an embargoed instrument.
As part of their determination to increase trade with China, the British Government sent me on a visit to China in October. As is well known, at about the same time, on the invitation of the Sino-British Trade Council, the Chinese Government sent to this country an economic and technical mission under the leadership of Dr. Ch'i Chao-ling which has had the opportunity of seeing the many developments which have taken place in British manufacturing techniques during the last few years. Dr. Ch'i and his colleagues have made many friends during their stay in this country and their departure, either tomorrow or Thursday, will be a matter for regret amongst the many people whom Dr. Ch'i Chao-ting has had the opportunity of meeting.
My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton referred to the "old China hands" and the need for not despising

the up-to-date methods of what one might describe as the new China hands. We should, indeed, pay attention to the way in which trade with China is developing from an organisational point of view. We are fortunate that British industrialists have decided to set up the Sino-British Trade Council as a body fully representative of British industry. This Council embodies all the five national trade organisations concerned with Sino-British trade, namely, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the China Association, the Federation of British Industries, the London Chamber of Commerce and the National Union of Manufacturers. In addition, a special office was set up for the duration of the visit of the technical mission, with a Chinese-speaking representative in attendance, to assist the mission in the planning of its visit.
The hon. Member for Govan referred to the number of distinguished persons at the reception this evening. That, too, is an indication of the great importance which is attached to the development of trade with China. I am sure that all traders, both British and Chinese, will find the services of the Sino-British Trade Council of the greatest value.
Here, I would just interject one note of warning; the British Council for the Promotion of International Trade, on the other hand, has been described several times in the House as a Communist-front organisation, and Her Majesty's Government have had, therefore, to advise firms not to associate themselves with it. There are one or two firms associated with trade with China which are members of the Forty-Eight Group which, I understand, claims that it has no connection with the B.C.P.I.T., but there must be some doubt about this claim so long as the Group sees fit to employ the director of the B.C.P.I.T. as its consultant.
My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton was kind enough to refer to my visit to China and I thought that I should mention briefly to the House some of its principal features. During my mission I was able to see the technical mission in Peking before it left for England and to assure its members that they would receive a warm reception while they were here. I soon realised, in Peking, that if my talks with the Chinese authorities were to be of value, I must see for myself


some of the Chinese industrial developments, similar to those seen by the hon. Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies) and the hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Thornton), who described them in such graphic detail to the House a few minutes ago.
I paid visits accordingly to 17 factories and several trade fairs, two State farms, a technical institute and a recently completed hydro-electric project, in the course of a journey which took me up to Harbin, in the north-east, and down to Shanghai, Wuhan and Canton, in the south. In Peking, I was able to have a series of talks with the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the State Planning Commission, the State Technological Commission, and various other Departments which had an interest in British goods and I had an opportunity for a long talk with the Prime Minister. Mr. Chou En-lai. We covered a wide range of subjects in these talks about which, of course, I cannot go into detail in this short debate.
I can, however, mention some general conclusions which may suggest ways in which our trade with China can develop in the future. In the first place, China is proceeding with a large programme of industrialisation. For this she has received, and is still receiving very considerable help from the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. In her planning, however, she is striving towards the goal of industrial self-sufficiency. China realises that it will be many years before this goal is reached and, as I pointed out to the Chinese on many occasions, the more successfully she industrialises, the more likely she is to need to import the specialised products of other highly developed countries.
Britain is well placed to fill these needs and supply these goods, particularly plant and machinery and industrial raw materials which China will need to fill the gaps in her own growing industrial production. The hon. Member for Leek referred to the British Embassy and I felt it was rather a pity that he made those remarks.

Mr. Harold Davies: They were not in a derogatory sense. If the hon. Gentleman will read my speech, he will find that I sincerely hoped that eventually we should develop technical assistance for our embassies overseas, which are doing a good job of work.

Mr. Erroll: I was particularly impressed by the way in which members of our embassy were following Chinese industrial development and taking the opportunity of going on industrial tours organised by the Chinese authorities and taking all possible steps to familiarise themselves with the developments that are taking place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Skip-ton and the hon. Member for Govan and others referred to trainees in England. I mentioned that point myself while I was in China. I said there that we should be very glad to receive Chinese trainees in our works and in our technical colleges, provided that vacancies were available and, of course, the necessary arrangements could be made, in just the same way as they would have to be made in respect of trainees coming from any other foreign country. I have been heartened to learn that several firms have indicated their willingness to receive Chinese trainees if arrangements can be concluded. I believe that there is a genuine desire on the part of the Chinese to buy more from Britain.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]

Mr. Erroll: I think that we may expect to see a steady but not a sudden or spectacular increase in our exports to China. In trying to trade with China, we must remember that that country has a centrally planned economy and is determined to maintain rigorous control over both her imports and her exports. This is perhaps the best answer that I can give to the question which has often been put to me since my return: can China afford to pay for more imports?
One hon. Gentleman referred to the very large sterling balances held by China. If they are as large as he suggested, I hope that the Chinese authorities will spend them in this country, but I think that it would be perhaps rather a barren pastime to speculate on the precise size of her sterling holdings at any given moment. I am sure, however, from what I learned that the Chinese Government are determined to import from the West only to the extent to which she can earn


foreign currency by corresponding exports.
I think that China is moving away from bilateral arrangements and favouring, quite properly in our view, an extension of multilateral trading so that she will be able to use her earnings from one country to pay for imports from another country. That is a form of trade in which Britain can benefit very substantially and in which we are well placed to help the Chinese in insurance, shipping and merchanting transactions should she wish to make use of the services which we have to offer.
I said that the Chinese Government are determined to match her imports by corresponding exports, and to this end the Government of China are embarking upon an export drive and looking to markets in many parts of the world as possible customers, not only for her traditional exports, but also for the manufactures coming out of her new factories. I made inquiries, while I was in Peking, about the question of credit. At present, there is no doubt that the Chinese would prefer to buy from us for cash, and I found no evidence of a desire to obtain goods on credit terms, in the sense usually understood by this phrase. This, of course, may change as the need for imports to fulfil the second five-year plan increases, but for the time being, at any rate. China may, in general, be regarded as a cash customer.
I was asked about E.C.G.D. and what it would do. As regards limits of cover, these are never obstacles which we disclose, and we would not, of course, make an exception in the case of China. E.C.G.D. works on strictly commercial lines and will consider applications for cover as and when they are asked for. We must wait until we see the necessity arising, and my impression, certainly at the time of my visit was that the Chinese wished to trade for cash.
What can we in Britain do to develop our trade with China? Many manufacturers will have had an opportunity of making contact with the technical mission and I hope that they will maintain those contacts whenever possible. There is a great demand in China today, as I found for technical information of all sorts. Manufacturers who supply this need may find that orders will subsequently come their way. At the same time, British

manufacturers must not forget that China is bound to develop her own export potential as rapidly as she can, particularly in manufactured goods.
To those firms who are only now thinking of investigating the Chinese market, stimulated perhaps by the news of the mission to England, I suggest that they approach initially the Commercial Counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in London, who will be able to tell them what are the broad trade prospects. At the same time, the Board of Trade will be glad to give advice or information, in so far as it is able, about the Chinese market.

Mr. Harold Davies: What about a handbook?

Mr. Erroll: The hon. Gentleman has asked me about a handbook. I shall certainly be glad to consider that suggestion. The trouble with a handbook is that it has to be in such general terms, if it is to cover the whole of the trade with a country, that it may not appear to have sufficiently detailed information for a particular industry; but I will look into that point.
Further, I would like to inform the House that a new post of Commercial Secretary at our Embassy in Peking has just been set up, and that the first occupant is already in the post. I had the opportunity of meeting him in Hong Kong, just before he went up to Peking, as I was on my way out. I was able to pass on to him some of my own impressions, and I hope he has been able to get off to a flying start. From now on, thanks to his presence in Peking, we shall be in an even better position than before to provide information and advice to would-be British exporters to China.
I have only one small point to add. As has been said. China is a country with about one quarter of the world's population. At present, only about one-third of I per cent. of our export trade goes to China. There is surely scope for an increase, and I believe that with good will on the part of both countries we should see this trade growing steadily during the coming years.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Ten o'clock.